Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

MERSEY TUNNEL BILL

Read the Third time and passed.

Oral Answers to Questions — PENSIONS AND NATIONAL INSURANCE

Widows' Pensions

Mr. Hector Hughes: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance if he is aware of the hardship imposed on those widows who, as the law now stands, are not entitled to any pension; and what steps he plans to take to remove this hardship.

The Minister of Pensions and National Insurance (Mr. Osbert Peake): The widowhood provisions of the National Insurance Acts are being reviewed by the National Insurance Advisory Committee, and I must await their Report. I would remind the hon. Member of the help which the National Assistance Board can provide in cases of need.

Mr. Hughes: While thanking the Minister for that reply, may I ask him whether the inquiry which is taking place is directed to increasing the pensions of the 10s. widows, and will it do anything to enable them to cope with the rising cost of living?

Mr. Peake: As the hon. and learned Gentleman probably recalls, we had a considerable debate during the passage of the National Insurance Bill before Christmas on these widowhood provisions, and, I think with the general approval of the House, I announced that I was referring them to the Advisory Committee. This is a very big subject, and I think we

shall all await with interest the Report of the Committee on the new provisions which were embodied in 1948.

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance what report he has received from the National Insurance Advisory Committee relating to the pension of widows receiving only 10s. a week.

Mr. Peake: I regret that I cannot add to the reply give to the hon. and gallant Member on 31st January.

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: Is the right hon. Gentleman not aware that delay in dealing with this matter is becoming something of a public scandal? Last December he gave an undertaking that the position of these widows would be reviewed. When will it be reviewed and when will something be done for this small but deserving class of pensioners?

Mr. Peake: It is now under review by the National Insurance Advisory Committee. That is an eminent body representing both sides of industry as well as other independent people. It reviewed maternity provisions during the lifetime of the preceding Government and took between a year to 15 months to produce its Report. I cannot hold out any hope that it will report on this matter in the near future. It is a matter of importance and the Committee should be given adequate time to investigate it.

Mr. G. M. Thomson: In handing this matter to the Committee, did the Minister emphasise its urgency and the need for a report as soon as possible?

Mr. Peake: We are all agreed that we should like to see the report as soon as practicable, but I am sure we all want to get a good scheme for these widows' pensions for the future; we must give very careful thought to any major alteration of the great Insurance Scheme upon which we embarked in 1948.

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: In view of the completely unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I beg to give notice that I shall raise the matter on the Adjournment.

Non-Contributory Pensions (Needs test)

Mr. Houghton: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance if he will take steps to bring the needs test for


the non-contributory pension and the assumed rates of interest on the capital resources of applicants into line with present conditions.

Mr. Peake: I would refer the hon. Member to my reply to the hon. Member for Accrington (Mr. H. Hynd) on 21st February.

Mr. Houghton: Has the right hon. Gentleman overlooked the fact that his party made a pledge to do this very thing in a pamphlet bearing the misleading title of "The Right Road for Britain"? When may we expect the right hon. Gentleman to honour that pledge?

Mr. Peake: The proposal, as I think the hon. Member is aware, was embodied in the Conservative election manifesto for the 1950 General Election but not repeated in its manifesto for the 1951 General Election. I am extremely surprised to find that the hon. Gentleman, whom I have always regarded as rather progressive, has now only got as far as the Conservative Party had got in 1950.

Miss Ward: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that he gave a pledge at the Conservative Party Conference at Margate about the small income groups, and will he also bear in mind that I am expecting that pledge to be implemented before very long?

Optional Pensions

Mr. Houghton: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance whether he will introduce legislation to provide an optional pension of 10s. a week without retirement conditions and without payment of contributions, other than for industrial injuries, for persons insured for five years before 5th July, 1948.

Mr. Peake: No, Sir.

Mr. Houghton: Has the right hon. Gentleman overlooked the fact that in a pamphlet issued by his party in 1950 a promise was made to do this very thing? Is it now the doctrine of the Conservative Party that the latest catalogue supersedes all previous ones?

Mr. Peake: By all means; and I repeat my surprise that the hon. Gentleman should be lumbering along four years behind the Conservative Party.

Earnings Rule

Mr. Houghton: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance whether he will assess casual earnings of retirement and widow pensioners on a monthly instead of the present weekly basis.

Mr. Peake: No, Sir. I do not think that it would be practicable to alter the weekly basis of the earnings rule.

Mr. Houghton: Is not the right hon. Gentleman being very tiresome in giving this insipid and feeble answer to a Question which asks when the Conservative Party is going to honour pledges made five years ago?

Mr. Peake: As the hon. Gentleman will recall, we lost the 1950 General Election and were, therefore, not put in a position where we should have to redeem the pledges given on that occasion. The hon. Gentleman will, of course, be in exactly the same position as regards the coming General Election as we were in 1950.

Captain Pilkington: Did not the financial position of the country also deteriorate a good deal in 1950 and 1951?

Miss Ward: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance on what date an increase in the permitted earnings rule for retirement pensions is to come into effect.

Mr. Peake: I have no such proposal in mind at the moment.

Miss Ward: Will my right hon. Friend say whether the matter has been referred to the National Insurance Advisory Committee, or whether the decision is one for him and the Government?

Mr. Peake: This matter of the earnings rule has not been referred to the National Insurance Advisory Committee. The Phillips Report referred to it and the Phillips Committee was unanimous in suggesting that the present rule should be maintained unaltered. We are to have a debate, I believe, on the Phillips Report, when hon. Members on all sides can put their views.

Mr. Nabarro: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that in the Midlands region we have 51,000 vacancies for jobs at present and many of these vacancies would be filled by old-age pensioners


were it not for the somewhat restrictive operation of the present earnings rule?

Mr. Peake: There is a good deal to be said on both sides of this question.

Miss Ward: Hurrah! That is a satisfactory admission at any rate.

Mr. Peake: However, I would ask my hon. Friend the Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) not to lose sight of the main objective, which is that people shall stay in work past the minimum retiring age and earn a pension sufficiently large to keep them out of the range of National Assistance for the rest of their days.

War Pensions Welfare Officers

Mr. Simmons: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance the numbers of war pensions welfare officers employed by his Department at the date of the merger and the latest available date; and the numbers of welfare officers at the date of the merger who are still engaged in those duties.

Mr. Peake: At the date of the merger 85 war pensions welfare officers were employed by my Department. There are now 76 officers acting as welfare officers, of whom two are employed part-time. Of the officers in post at the date of the merger, 55 are still employed as welfare officers.

Mr. Simmons: Is the Minister aware it is felt that many of the welfare officers who were with the Department at the time of the merger have gone and that this means that there is a diminution in the welfare work? His figures show that there is a reduction in the number of welfare officers. Can he explain whether this reduction is temporary, or whether he intends to make appointments to fill the vacancies?

Mr. Peake: The reduction is perfectly normal. Since the merger, war pensioners have been able to make their inquiries of a far more widely spread network of offices than they could before the merger. It is therefore not necessary to have as many welfare officers today as two years ago.

Mr. Simmons: Does the Minister mean to say that a counter clerk can do the job that used to be done by welfare officers

who had personal contacts with the pensioners, as was most important?

Mr. Peake: We found that a great many war pensioners make inquiries at our local offices. Those inquiries previously needed a visit from the welfare officer.

Mr. Chetwynd: Is it a fact that the former very excellent welfare service is losing its identity in this larger organisation?

Mr. Peake: I should completely deny that and challenge anyone to show that since the merger there has been any deterioration whatsoever in the service we are giving to the war disabled.

Staff Reductions

Mr. Simmons: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance how many of the 677 staff, referred to in Command Paper No. 9400 as being the figure of reduction, are accounted for by way of transfer to the Ministry of Health on duties performed by the Ministry of Pensions before the merger; and how many by way of transfer to the National Assistance Board.

Mr. Peake: None, Sir.

Mr. Simmons: Can the Minister then explain where these reductions have taken place and whether they affect the personal relationship between the war pensions side of his work and the individual pensioners?

Mr. Peake: The reduction in the numbers employed by my Ministry is due partly to normal wastage and partly to a reduction by the discharge of 580 casual staff who had been engaged in issuing tokens for milk and other welfare foods to children and expectant mothers under the agency arrangements on behalf of the Ministry of Food.

Mr. Nabarro: A very satisfactory answer.

Mr. Peake: Thank you.

Personal Case

Mr. G. M. Thomson: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance whether, in the case of Mr. John T. Thomson, of 1 South Baffin Street, Dundee, he will order a fresh investigation of his application for a pension in the


light of the new medical evidence which has been drawn to his attention by the hon. Member for Dundee, East.

Mr. Peake: As the hon. Member knows, this application was decided by the independent Pensions Appeal Tribunal. The further representations have been carefully considered by my senior medical officers, but I am advised that they do not disclose any ground for reopening the case.

Mr. Thomson: While appreciating the action the Minister has already taken in this case, and being aware of his legal position, is the right hon. Gentleman telling the House that it is impossible for him to take fresh action in the light of this new medical evidence which has considerable validity?

Mr. Peake: Of course, the case could be reopened if there was any deterioration in condition or any new medical evidence. But I think that these individual cases are much better dealt with by consultation; perhaps the hon. Member would care to discuss the matter with my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary.

Old-Age Pensioners (Assistance)

Mr. Dodds: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance how many books with the new scale of allowances have been issued to old-age pensioners up to the latest convenient date; and in how many cases the increases are restricted to 2s. 6d. for single pensioners and 4s. for married couples.

Mr. Peake: I assume that the hon. Member is referring to the review of Assistance allowances consequent upon the new Assistance Regulations approved in December. About one million cases have been reviewed, and increases in excess of the sums mentioned by the hon. Member were given in about 40,000 cases.

Mr. Dodds: Is not the right hon. Gentleman evading the Question? Does he not appreciate that the information which has been sought in the past few weeks is how many old-age pensioners will not get 7s. 6d. and 11s., but 2s. 6d. and 4s.? Can he deny that 700,000 single old-age pensioners will not get 7s. 6d. but only 2s. 6d.?

Mr. Peake: I am afraid that I cannot affirm or deny any such figures, because

the only figures we have of the number of pensioners receiving particular amounts of Assistance are those discovered by taking a sample of 2½per cent. in the first week of November each year. Therefore, we cannot tell what will be the number of persons on Assistance getting a particular amount of increase under the old-age pensions provisions during the coming months.

Mr. Dodds: Does the Minister not recollect that in a written answer on 21st February he said that 700,000 single persons whose Assistance rate had been increased by 2s. 6d. a week would not have their total incomes increased by the new pension rates? Why is he so hesitant about giving details of the very shabby treatment of old-age pensioners?

Mr. Peake: That Question is not quite the same as that on the Order Paper. If the hon. Member would care to meet me or the Parliamentary Secretary, we will try to explain the practical difficulty in supplying the figures for which he has asked.

Hospitals

Mr. Simmons: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance how many hospitals and hospital beds are under the control of his Department today as compared with the number under the control of the Ministry of Pensions before the merger.

Mr. Peake: There are no hospitals or hospital beds under the control of my Department; this function was transferred to my right hon. Friends the Minister of Health and the Secretary of State for Scotland.

Oral Answers to Questions — GERMANY

East German Forces

Mr. F. M. Bennett: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs the present estimated strength, in manpower and equipment, of military and paramilitary forces in East Germany; and at what date East German rearmament began.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Lord John Hope): The rearmament of Eastern Germany began in October, 1948. It is estimated that by July, 1954, the military and para-military forces totalled about 95,000 men. Further details of this rearmament were given in


Command Paper No. 9213, published last July. Present information does not differ materially from that given in the White Paper, except that it is now estimated that the naval forces have been increased by about 50 per cent.

Mr. Bennett: Since it is quite clear from that reply that East German rearmament began well before any question of the West German contribution to our common defence even arose, and secondly, that a formidable and growing military machine now exists in the Eastern Zone, would not the Minister agree that the continuing sanctimonious protests about the danger of German rearmament now being indulged in by the Communists and their fellow-traveller echoes here are nauseatingly phoney?

Lord John Hope: Yes, Sir. I think that is putting it mildly.

West Berlin (Dr. Truschnowitsch)

Mr. Peyton: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (1) what replies have been received from the Soviet authorities to the protests made concerning the kidnapping in West Berlin of Dr. Truschnowitsch on 13th April, 1954;
(2) if he will instruct the United Kingdom delegate to raise in the General Assembly of the United Nations the question of the kidnapping of Dr. Truschnowitsch in West Berlin on 13th April, 1954.

Mr. J. Eden: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs when the case of the kidnapping of Dr. Alexander Truschnowitsch by Soviet agents on 13th April, 1954, was referred to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights; and what further action he intends to take in this matter.

Lord John Hope: The only reply so far received is contained in a communication of 22nd April, in which the Soviet Commandant repeated the statement broadcast by East Berlin Radio that Dr. Truschnowitsch had voluntarily given himself up to the East German authorities. This assertion is not consonant with the evidence. I am satisfied that no useful purpose would be served by trying to pursue this matter through the United Nations. The Human Rights Commission discusses general problems of human

rights and isnot empowered to consider individual cases. Nor is there any effective action which the General Assembly could take in this matter. Further action can, I think, best be taken direct with the Soviet authorities, and I am considering instructing the British Commandant in Berlin to raise this question again with the Soviet Commandant.

Mr. Peyton: While I welcome the last part of that reply, may I ask my hon. Friend to consider publishing in full in a White Paper the activities in connection with this quite unexplained crime? Is my hon. Friend aware that, from the point of view of public opinion, it is most undesirable to allow these disgraceful occurrences to disappear into obscruity without their being challenged, and challenged frequently?

Lord John Hope: I will look into the question of a White Paper. In answer to the last point, I hope that these questions and answers will remove any doubts about the matter. This is still very much in the forefront.

Mr. J. Eden: Is not it a fact that we have already protested three times by sending three Notes to the Russian authorities on this case and that no satisfactory reply—in fact I believe no reply at all—has been received? What purpose will be served by sending further notes of protest? Does my hon. Friend hope to get a satisfactory reply from the Russian authorities by sending a note of that nature?

Lord John Hope: There is nothing like keeping on trying.

Shipbuilding (Size and Speed)

Mr. Warbey: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is aware that West German shipyards are constructing ships exceeding the permitted size and speed; and what steps the Allied Security Board are taking to prevent them.

The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. Anthony Nutting): The answer to the first part of the Question is "No," Sir. The second part of the Question therefore does not arise.

Mr. Warbey: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether or not it is a fact that three ships beyond the permitted


size and speed were constructed in the Lürssens shipyard; that protests were made, and that eventually the ships were taken over by the Royal Navy? Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether three further ships have now been laid down which also exceed the permitted limits?

Mr. Nutting: No, Sir. The hon. Gentleman is wrong. As regards ships other than those with military features, the Allied High Commission is able under Article II of Regulation No. 7 to keep a check on
… the construction or conversion of any ship designed to exceed 100 gross registered tons or 12 knots speed.
In both these instances the Allied High Commission has agreed to the ships being constructed. In the case of the first three fast patrol boats which were made, the Royal Navy subsequently arranged to buy them, and in the second case the question of a licence is under consideration and it has not yet been granted.

OIL (UNITED NATIONS REPORT)

Mr. G. M. Thomson: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what instructions were given to the United Kingdom representatives on the Coal Committee of the Economic Commission for Europe in connection with pressing for the publication of the report on the price of oil in Western Europe.

Lord John Hope: The decision to publish had the full support of Her Majesty's Government.

Mr. Thomson: Is the Minister aware that the attitude taken by the Government's representatives on this Committee was really a most ambiguous one? While welcoming the report, could not they also have deplored the fact shown in it that£300 million a year has been made in profit on Middle East oil? Is not the Minister in agreement that we ought to have positive effort from the Government to bring down the price of petrol in this country?

Lord John Hope: I would refer the hon. Member to the Adjournment debate on 18th March.

AUSTRIAN STATE TREATY

Mr. Warbey: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what further progress has been made towards the conclusion of an Austrian treaty.

Mr. Hamilton: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether, in view of the new proposals of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, he will now make renewed efforts to conclude a peace treaty for Austria.

Mr. Nutting: Her Majesty's Government have still received no clarification from the Soviet Government of their position in reply to Her Majesty's Government's Note of 29th November. As the House is aware, there has recently been an exchange of views in Moscow between the Soviet Foreign Minister and the Austrian Ambassador. These exchanges, of which we have been informed by the Austrian Government, were the subject of statements by the Soviet Government on 11th March and by the Austrian Government on 16th March. I am arranging for copies of these statements to be placed in the Library of the House.
Her Majesty's Government reaffirmed on 2nd March their desire to proceed as soon as possible to the signature of the Austrian State Treaty and the termination of the occupation and the withdrawal of foreign troops. I much regret that Mr. Molotov's exchanges with the Austrian Ambassador suggest that the Soviet Government is more intent on posing new conditions to the Austrian Government than on concluding the Treaty with them.

Mr. Warbey: Is not it clear from these exchanges that the only possible difference between the Russians and the Western Powers now on the Austrian Treaty is the question of guarantees against a possible German Anschluss? Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether the Government would be prepared to enter into a conference with a view to signing the Treaty and giving quadripartite guarantees against an Anschluss?

Mr. Nutting: There would be no purpose in entering into a conference to deal with the question of an Anschluss which is already prohibited specifically in an Article under the Austrian State Treaty.

Mr. Hamilton: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether the proposals made by the Government at the Berlin Conference on the Austrian Treaty still hold good, and whether the Government intend to stand fast on the question of an Austrian peace treaty until after the completion of ratification of the Paris Agreements?

Mr. Nutting: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the first part of his supplementary question. The position of Her Majesty's Government remains as stated at the Berlin Conference on the Austrian State Treaty. As to the question of a conference before ratification of the Paris Agreements, I see no useful purpose whatever in holding such a conference until the Soviet Government have clarified their position. So far all they have done is to offer further prevarication.

Mr. Mott-Radclyffe: Is not it a fact that all the original Soviet objections to the outstanding clauses of the Treaty have been met, and that all that is required now is a little goodwill on the part of the Soviet Union in the signing of the Treaty?

Mr. Nutting: My hon. Friend is perfectly correct. All that is required now is a Soviet signature to the Treaty which they themselves brought to the Berlin Conference.

VISAS (UNITED STATES CITIZENS)

Mr. Dugdale: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in how many cases during the past year applications for visas made by United States citizens desiring to visit this country have been refused; and, in case of refusals, what reasons have been given to the applicants.

Lord John Hope: United States citizens do not require visas for travel to the United Kingdom. The visa requirement was abolished by the last Government in November, 1948.

Mr. Dugdale: Will the hon. Gentleman bring this to the notice of the American Government and ask whether they might not be as courteous in representations made to them by British subjects desiring to enter America as we are about American citizens desirous of entering this country?

Lord John Hope: That certainly would be very nice, but it is the opposite of what the right hon. Gentleman asked me about.

VIET-NAM (REFUGEES)

Mr. H. Fraser: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is satisfied that the movement, guaranteed under the Geneva Agreement, of refugees, including Catholics, Buddhists, and other religious denominations from Viet-Minh to Viet-Nam, is proceeding satisfactorily.

Mr. Nutting: Since the cessation of hostilities in Viet-Nam over half a million refugees have left the Viet-Minh zone in the north for the south. Many others would probably like to follow their example and Her Majesty's Government are not satisfied that the Viet-Minh authorities are adequately fulfilling their obligations under the Geneva Agreement to permit and assist and movement of would-be refugees. The International Supervisory Commission for Viet-Nam are, however, doing their best to remedy this situation. Their Chairman recently told the Press that the Commission were determined to ensure that all those wishing to leave North Viet-Nam would be able to exercise their right of option.

Mr. Fraser: As my right hon. Friend is doubtless aware, is it not a fact that the period during which these persons can be moved ends within a month from now? In view of the failure of the Viet-Minh to work in accordance with the agreement, is it not possible to extend the period during which these persons can be transferred?

Mr. Nutting: I will certainly consider that, but, of course, it is laid down in the Geneva Agreements that the time limit for the transfer of refugees expires on 18th May this year. However, I will consider my hon. Friend's suggestion.

EXPORTS TO CHINA (STRATEGIC LIST)

Mr. A. Henderson: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to what extent the 1951 resolution of the United Nations General Assembly placing an embargo on the supply of strategic materials to the People's Republic of China still remains operative.

Mr. Nutting: This Resolution is still in force

Mr. Henderson: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether, at the time that it imposed the embargo, it was the intention of the General Assembly to continue it until there was a final political settlement in Korea?

Mr. Nutting: I think that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will know more than I do about the intentions of the General Assembly during his period of office.

NUCLEAR TESTS

Mr. A. Henderson: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (1) the means by which nuclear bombs can be tested other than by an explosion;
(2) to what extent those nuclear experiments which can now be carried out without explosions involve the release of radioactive substances harmful to human health and welfare.

Mr. Nutting: In the debate on 14th March, my right hon. Friend said in dealing with the question of test explosions of nuclear weapons:
We cannot exclude the possibility of experiments being carried out now without explosions.
Experiments aimed at perfecting or improving existing designs or adding to existing stocks of nuclear weapons can be carried out without test explosions. My right hon. Friend did not say that a nuclear weapon can be fully tested without an explosion. I am advised that experiments carried out without explosions would release little or no radioactivity.

Mr. Henderson: As even a small amount of radioactivity might be released, may I ask the Minister of State whether, instead of waiting until July when the conference of scientists is to take place at Geneva, he would consider utilising the World Meteorological Organisation, of which both Russia and the United States are members, and which has a very fine record of world co-operation, for the purpose of checking the contents of the world's atmosphere through its physicists and then pooling that information, as is done with weather forecasts?

Mr. Nutting: I will consider the right hon. and learned Gentleman's suggestion, but, as I think he knows, a great deal of research is going on in this country at the moment—a matter which will be alluded to in tomorrow's debate—by medical authorities, including the World Medical Research Council.

Mr. Strachey: Would not the right hon. Gentleman agree that the fact that development can, to a certain extent, go on without test explosions is no reason for failing to press for the abolition of these explosions, which would be the one practical means towards making a start for some sort of international agreement limiting this form of arms?

Mr. Nutting: I think that the right hon. Gentleman would also agree that it would be very dangerous if the people of this country should fall into a false sense of security, which might easily result from an abolition of tests, without, at the same time, being able to ensure that our potential enemies were unable to perfect or improve existing designs of nuclear weapons.

Mr. Nabarro: Is it not a fact that, in any event, the restricted release of radioactive material to which my right hon. Friend referred in connection with warlike purposes is infinitely less than the amount which we are at present discharging by developing atomic power for purely peaceful purposes?

Mr. Nutting: I think that this is all getting a little too scientific for a Foreign Office Minister.

Mr. Noel-Baker: Since the tactical aspects are quite as important as the scientific aspects, will the Minister not consider my right hon. and learned Friend's suggestion that the World Meteorological Organisation might take into consideration the whole matter of testing for radiation in the atmosphere?

Mr. Nutting: I said that I would. I was merely describing very briefly—what I hope will be fully discussed tomorrow—what is being done.

Mr. S. Silverman: Can the right hon. Gentleman say what consideration the Government have given to the suggestion made by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition in the debate a little


time ago for having a meeting of international scientists from both sides to investigate what are the consequences of these explosions?

Mr. Nutting: I think that had better be left to be thrashed out in the debate tomorrow. For the moment, I will only say that I think this matter must be dealt with through Governments and not left to international scientists.

Mr. D. Healey: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether, in view of the latest scientific evidence, he will make proposals for a ban on all experimental atomic explosions.

Mr. E. L. Mallalieu: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will now give the result of his inquiry into the possibility of banning further experimental nuclear explosions, haying regard to the danger of such explosions to the human race.

Mr. Nutting: I would refer the hon. Gentlemen to the statement made on this subject by my right hon. Friend in the debate on 14th March. I would only add that the aim of Her Majesty's Government is to reach agreement upon a balanced and comprehensive disarmament programme which would include the abolition of all nuclear weapons and thus eliminate such test explosions.

Mr. Healey: As it is only atomic explosions which produce dangerous radiation effects at long distance; as such explosions are not necessary for purposes of research, as the Minister has just admitted, and as such explosions can be monitored without difficulty, will not the right hon. Gentleman agree that there is an overwhelming case for banning such explosions?

Mr. Nutting: No, Sir, as was explained by my right hon. Friend, and as I have just endeavoured to explain in answer to the hon. Gentleman's right hon. Friends.

Mr. Mallalieu: While agreeing with the right hon. Gentleman's expressed intention to obtain the maximum amount of disarmament in the widest possible field, is not this a peculiarly suitable case for a beginning, in that these explosions can be tested and checked, no matter where they take place? Will the right hon. Gentleman not follow up his right hon. Friend's suggestion that he would look

into the possibility of obtaining agreement to stop these explosions in the near future?

Mr. Nutting: My right hon. Friend never said that he would agree to stop these test explosions in the near future. Certainly not. What he said was that the non-existence of test explosions did not mean that the nations possessed of nuclear weapons were not improving and perfecting them simply because they were not actually having explosions.

Mr. Attlee: Surely, the right hon. Gentleman is rather dealing with irrelevancies. The point raised was whether or not the atmosphere was being endangered by nuclear explosions. The fact that research can go on without endangering human life does not alter the fact that, if they are going on, we may be in danger. According to the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro), we are being endangered by tests carried out for peaceful means as well. We may be killed by the hon. Member for Kidderminster! Surely, it is worth inquiring into that?

Mr. Nutting: At the risk of contradicting my hon. Friend the Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro), I will say that my scientific advice at the moment is that there is no danger to human life or to the reproduction of the human animal from any explosions which have so far taken place.

Mr. Strachey: Are we really to conclude from what the Minister of State says that the opinion of the Government is that they are against the banning of these test explosions as a first step unless we can go much further in the way of disarmament because it might produce a sense of false security in this country? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that if that is the position, the British people will have no sense of security, false or true, in the ability of the Government to protect their interests?

Mr. Nutting: The right hon. Gentleman is making a travesty of my argument. What I said was that the Government wished, and are striving for at every session at Lancaster House, to ensure a balanced and comprehensive disarmament programme that will eliminate all nuclear weapons.

Mr. Henderson: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether the proposal by the Government of India for a standstill agreement of tests, which was remitted to the special committee of the General Assembly, has been considered at Lancaster House?

Mr. Nutting: I am not allowed to divulge what is and what is not being considered at Lancaster House. We are governed by the strictest rules of secrecy, and I cannot divulge any part of our business.

Mr. H. Fraser: Does the hon. Member for Leeds, South-East (Mr. D. Healey) propose that there should be a ban on other persons making these atomic explosions? What could be more dangerous in this country than to ban test explosions?

Mr. E. Fletcher: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if, notwithstanding the United States Atomic Energy Act of 1954, Her Majesty's Government will press the United States Government for the fullest information as to the genetic effects on human beings of radioactivity resulting from thermo-nuclear tests to be made available in this country.

Mr. Nutting: The provisions of the United States Atomic Energy Act of 1954 relating to health and safety refer primarily to work in the civil field. Most of the information concerning the possible genetic effects arising from nuclear tests is not secret, and there is already close collaboration between British and American research workers and constant exchange of information in this field.

Mr. Fletcher: Are we to understand from that reply that the Minister of State recognises that there is all the difference in the world between the secrecy involved in making and designing nuclear weapons and scientific knowledge as to the effects of nuclear explosions? May we take it that in the interests of humanity and peace Her Majesty's Government are pressing the United States Government for all available information as to the effects of nuclear explosions upon the human race?

Mr. Nutting: We are already receiving a great deal of information from the United States Government about the effects of these explosions, and under the agreement which we are now negotiating we hope to receive even more.

Mr. Noel-Baker: Will the Government ask British scientists to give their evidence upon the subject and publish it?

Mr. Nutting: That is a different question from the one on the Order Paper.

Mrs. Castle: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will propose the calling of a special meeting of the General Assembly of the United Nations to discuss the effects of hydrogen bomb tests on the world's atmosphere and to set up an international study group to examine and report on the genetic and other consequences of these tests.

Mr. Nutting: No, Sir; my right hon. Friend does not consider that a debate in the United Nations General Assembly at the present time would advance our knowledge of these scientific questions. But he does not exclude exchanges of views with such other countries as may be ready and able to make a useful contribution.

Mrs. Castle: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that a number of British scientists, including Professor Waddington, in "The Times" the other day, have supported the plea of the American Federation of Scientists for a United Nations inquiry into this matter? Is he aware that we are now reaching a position in which British and American scientists are warning us that this danger is real and immediate and are, by implication, accusing Governments of concealing the facts?

Mr. Nutting: The hon. Lady talks as if no research work were going on into this problem whatever but, as I have said—and the debate tomorrow will bring out the fact far more fully—a great deal of work is going on on both sides of the Atlantic, and a great deal of information is being exchanged.

Mr. Attlee: Will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind that he will want to make a much better reply to tomorrow's debate than that?

INDO-CHINA (GENEVA CONFERENCE DECLARATION)

Mr. Warbey: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs which Governments and authorities are parties to the


final declaration of the Geneva Conference on the problem of restoring peace in Indo-China.

Mr. Nutting: The final declaration of the Geneva Conference is not a treaty or signed agreement, but is in the nature of a resolution by the conference as a whole. There are no parties to it in the strict sense. The respective attitudes of the members of the Geneva Conference towards the declaration, as stated at the final session, are set out in Command 9239.

Mr. Warbey: Regardless of the question whether or not this is a treaty, can the right hon. Gentleman say whether Her Majesty's Government stand by the terms of that declaration and intend to uphold them?

Mr. Nutting: Yes. Her Majesty's Government not only stand by the terms of that declaration but have entered into the Manila Treaty in order to support them.

YALTA CONFERENCE (PUBLICATION OF DOCUMENTS)

Mr. John Hall: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what consultations were held between Her Majesty's Government and the United States Government before publication of the Yalta Conference papers.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs the nature of his representations to the Government of the United States of America about the publication of the documents relating to the Yalta Conference.

Mr. Nutting: I have nothing to add to the reply which my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister gave on 17th March to a Question by the right hon. and learned Member for Rowley Regis and Tipton (Mr. A. Henderson).

Mr. Hall: Is my right hon. Friend aware that those people who regard the United States of America with the respect and affection due to a great and generous ally have been very shocked at the action of the State Department? Will he make it clear to the United States Government that although future publication of similar documents, such as the reports of

the Potsdam and Casablanca Conferences, might enhance the reputation of those representing Her Majesty's Government at those conferences, they will have most undesirable international repercussions in so far as they will inhibit candid conversations at future high-level meetings, and might even make it impossible to arrange them?

Mr. Nutting: I think that the Government's view in this matter has been fully stated to the House by the Prime Minister, and also to the United States Government by the Foreign Secretary.

Mr. Hughes: Is the Minister aware that, far from being shocked at the publication of these statements, some of us strongly regret the anti-American sentiment now being shown against the United States Government for publishing documents which it is in the interests of people all over the world to read?

Mr. Nutting: I am relieved and delighted to hear that the hon. Member is shocked by anti-American sentiment.

OVERSEAS INFORMATION SERVICES

Mr. Mott-Radclyffe: asked the Secretary for Foreign Affairs in which countries increased expenditure on overseas information services has been effected during the current financial year.

Lord John Hope: There has been expansion in the following areas

1. Four new information offices have been opened, in Bahrain (Persian Gulf), Lagos, Accra and Port of Spain.
2. The information offices in Tehran and Stockholm have been reopened.
3. Information staffs were strengthened in Singapore, Indochina, Burma, Japan, Siam, the Lebanon, Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, Colombia, Australia and New Zealand.

Mr. Mott-Radclyffe: Does my hon. Friend agree that this welcome expansion is really essential for the conduct of the cold war and that if these essential overseas services are to function properly they must not be starved of the equally essential funds?

Lord John Hope: Yes, Sir.

Oral Answers to Questions — COAL

Stocks

Mr. Dodds: asked the Minister of Fuel and Power if he will make a statement giving the latest details of the coal situation.

Mr. Nabarro: asked the Minister of Fuel and Power by how much coal consumption in Great Britain exceeded coalmining output during the first 11 weeks in 1955, excluding exports and imports of coal; and by how much coal output in Great Britain declined during that period of 11 weeks compared with the equivalent period in 1954.

Mr. G. M. Thomson: asked the Minister of Fuel and Power if he will make a statement on the supply of domestic fuel in the city of Dundee.

Mr. Gibson: asked the Minister of Fuel and Power whether he is aware that a shortage of coal is developing in the London area; what are the present stocks of coal in London depots; and what steps he is taking to ensure that Londoners will have sufficient coal supplies during the next few weeks.

Mr. Moyle: asked the Minister of Fuel and Power if he is aware of the hardship caused to domestic users in the Oldbury and Halesowen constituency by the shortage of coal; and what action he is taking in the matter.

Mr. W. Wells: asked the Minister of Fuel and Power what arrangements he will make to expedite the delivery of coal to suppliers in Walsall.

Mr. Langford-Holt: asked the Minister of Fuel and Power whether he will make a full statement on the past and present coal supply position in Shrewsbury.

The Minister of Fuel and Power (Mr. Geoffrey Lloyd): London house coal stocks are still well above the average for this time of year and the additional supplies that I mentioned in the House last week have improved the position in the country generally. Industrial stocks are generally sufficient, and special action has been taken to help gas works in two or three towns. Power station stocks are at a safe level and there have been no power cuts.

Output of our own coal increased last year until the winter, when it started to decline. In the first 10 weeks of 1955 it was 1·1 million tons less than in the corresponding period of 1954 and 3·5 million tons less than current inland consumption. It was, therefore, fortunate that last summer we made arrangements for large imports to come in throughout the winter months; and the House will see that these imports have played an essential part in maintaining our fuel supplies during this long winter.

Mr. Dodds: In view of what the right hon. Gentleman has said, how can he explain the fact that of the 390 coal distributing depots in London a large percentage are completely without coal; the remainder have only a few tons left, and the official statement is that they are very much worse off now than they were at this time last year?

Mr. Lloyd: I cannot agree with that. At this time of year it is normal for merchants to rely primarily upon current supplies.

Mr. Nabarro: In consideration of the fact that production has declined so far this year, and notwithstanding our importing 4 million tons this year, is it not the fact that in order to sustain an increasing level of general industrial production during the next 12 months we may have to import as much as 10 million tons? In those circumstances would it not be propitious for my right hon. Friend to renew his efforts to impress upon the whole of British industry the urgent need for using coal with much greater efficiency?

Mr. Lloyd: I very much agree with the concluding remarks of my hon. Friend, without necessarily following the detailed calculations which he made earlier on. With regard to production, it is necessary to be scrupulously fair. Forty per cent. of the decrease in production this year has been in respect of opencast and not deep-mined coal, and almost half the reduction in output from deep mines has been due to a difference in the onset of holidays, especially in Scotland. Nevertheless, it is true that output has been disappointing, and I am very glad that the last two weeks have shown a pronounced upward improvement.

Mr. Gibson: Will the Minister now reply to that part of my Question—


included in his general answer—which asked what are the stocks of coal in London? My information is the same as that of my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Mr. Dodds), namely, that there is a very great shortage. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in respect of Coalite, for instance, there is a waiting period of over eight weeks; that one cannot now get coke in London; that coal is in very short supply, and that a number of people in South-West London have cellars completely empty of coal, coke or Coalite? That being so, how can he be so complacent about the position?

Mr. Lloyd: The question of Coalite is an entirely special one. It is a special fuel, and there are only relatively small supplies of it. The main difficulty in London is that of distributing both coal and coke, and, as I explained last week, that is a difficulty which always arises at the end of a long cold spell. Merchants not only in London but in all parts of the country have been working during this last weekend to make up the arrears.

Mr. Gaitskell: May I ask two questions of the Minister? First, can he give the House some idea of the volume of distributed stocks which he expects to exist at the end of the coal winter, that is, at the end of April? Secondly, in view of the large scale on which imports of coal have been taking place, is the right hon. Gentleman satisfied that it is wise to continue to export so much despite the fact that it involves importing coal at a high price?

Mr. Lloyd: I could not give the House the exact figure of what I expect distributed stocks to be at the end of April. Stocks are 2 million tons lower than at this time last year, but, of course, they are considerably higher than during most of the years when the last Government were in office. Regarding the question of exports, while I recognise the point made by the right hon. Gentleman, he must also be aware of the desirability of keeping a foot, so to speak, in our traditional export markets in the interests of the industry.

Mr. J. Eden: Would not the Minister agree that many of our fuel problems would be solved if only we could get more coal from our own mines?

Mr. Hamilton: Sign him on.

Mr. Gaitskell: Is the Minister aware that under the Labour Government we did not import 4 million tons of coal—

Mr. Nabarro: What about 1947?

Mr. Gaitskell: We did not import 4 million tons of coal. [Interruption.] Is the Minister aware that had the Labour Government at that time imported 4 million tons of coal the hon. Gentleman would perhaps have been in a more excitable mood than he is today? May I press the Minister further on this question of exports; would he give some idea of the net loss per ton sustained by having to export while importing so much?

Mr. Lloyd: Normally the Coal Board loses £2 per ton on coal imports.

Mr. Wells: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The Minister did not answer my Question No. 57.

Mr. Langford-Holt: Do I understand that my right hon. Friend answered my Question? I listened carefully to his answer but I did not hear the name of Shrewsbury mentioned.

Mr. G. M. Thomson: Do I understand that Question No. 52 was answered with the others? I did not hear Dundee mentioned.

Mr. Speaker: It was included in the general reply.

Domestic Allocation System

Mr. Collins: asked the Minister of Fuel and Power if he will lift present restrictions so that domestic consumers can purchase coal from any merchant.

Mr. Geoffrey Lloyd: I regret that this is not possible at present.

Mr. Collins: Is the Minister aware that many merchants, particularly in London, have informed their registered customers that they cannot deliver orders for as long as four weeks and that unless a temporary relaxation of present arrangements is made large numbers of people have no hope whatever of getting any coal at all? Will he therefore consider a temporary relaxation to help such people?

Mr. Lloyd: It was with that object that I made the statement that I did last week.

Mr. Langford-Holt: asked the Minister of Fuel and Power whether he will introduce a coal rationing system with a minimum ration instead of an allocation system which is a maximum allocation.

Mr. Geoffrey Lloyd: I should be reluctant to make any change such as that proposed by my hon. Friend which would make more elaborate our present administrative arrangements.

Mr. Langford-Holt: Can my right hon. Friend assure me that the people in my constituency who are entitled to it could have the total allocation by the end of the summer months?

Mr. Lloyd: I will write to my hon. Friend.

Viscount Hinchingbrooke: Is my right hon. Friend aware that production and productivity are often increased by allowing the law of supply and demand to operate in the original market? Why is it not possible now, in the present state of coal production, to allow not only a consumer to change his coal merchant, but the merchant to change his mine, or source of supply?

Mr. Lloyd: Fundamentally the reason is that, unless there is a system of ration books or some method of that kind, the only way to enforce the restrictions on coal deliveries—which are, unfortunately, still necessary because production is not sufficient to enable rationing to be abolished—is for the merchant to keep records. We cannot, therefore allow consumers to change their merchant frequently, otherwise the records would get into a state of complete confusion. I have, however, moved in the direction desired by my hon. Friends by increasing from one month to four the period during which consumers can change their merchant.

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: Is not there something very unsatisfactory about the present system if, as is quite obvious, the Minister has been given completely inaccurate information about the position of coal stocks in London, Shrewsbury and all over the country? Will not the right hon. Gentleman examine the system to see that at least he gives accurate information to the House?

GAS POISONING (FRACTURED MAINS)

Mr. A. Roberts: asked the Minister of Fuel and Power if he will set up a committee of inquiry into the frequent causes of fractured gas mains, which have resulted in many incidents of gas poisoning with fatal results during the past few months.

Mr. Geoffrey Lloyd: I would refer the hon. Member to the reply which I gave on 14th March to a similar Question by the hon. Lady the Member for Leeds, North-East (Miss Bacon).

Mr. Roberts: In view of the many deaths arising from these tragic circumstances, would not public opinion best be served by having an inquiry by an independent committee?

Mr. Lloyd: I think that we had better await the technical inquiry being made at the present time.

Mr. Hastings: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether there is any means of detecting small quantities of gas escaping from fractured mains apart from the smell?

Mr. Lloyd: No, Sir. The Gas Industry has given a good deal of thought to this problem but has not yet found a solution to it.

CHURCH PROPERTY (REPAIRS)

Mr. Parkin: asked the hon. Member for Finchley, as representing the Church Commissioners, what plans the Commissioners have for protecting the value of church property by making loans to leaseholders to enable repairs and improvements to be made to houses which would otherwise fall into decay.

Sir J. Crowder: None. Leases granted by the Commissioners normally place the responsibility for repairs on lessees. As regards improvements the Housing Repairs and Rents Acts, 1954, enables a lessee whose lease has more than 15 years to run to apply to his local authority for a grant, and the Commissioners would always be willing to advise a lessee in this matter.

Mr. Parkin: asked the hon. Member for Finchley, as representing the Church Commissioners, what steps are being taken to prevent the disposal of un expired leases of Church Commission property to persons unable to maintain the fabric according to the terms of the original lease.

Sir J. Crowder: Where the terms of a lease require the Commissioners' consent to an assignment, they take steps to ensure that the assignee will be able to keep the property in good condition. Where there is no such condition in an old lease the Commissioners can do nothing.

Mr. Parkin: Does not that reply indicate a certain helplessness on the part of the Commissioners? Will not they try to do something more useful than merely advising people to go to the local authorities? Have they no business sense or social sense?'

Sir J. Crowder: The lady referred to in the Question is a lessee and not a weekly tenant. In this case we are dealing with the building society which pays the ground rent.

Mr. Bellenger: Is the hon. Member quite right in stating that the Commissioners can do nothing? Surely they can serve a schedule of dilapidations and, if necessary, go to the court, ask for possession, become landlords themselves and carry out the repairs?

Sir J. Crowder: Yes, the Commissioners could do that. But I think the hon. Member for Paddington, North (Mr. Parkin) wanted more. He wanted us to deal direct with the leaseholder.

Mr. Parkin: asked the hon. Member for Finchley, as representing the Church Commissioners, what help the Commissioners are able to offer to a widow in Paddington, whose name and address have been supplied to them, to enable urgent necessary repairs, costing several hundred pounds, to be carried out

to the house of which she is the leaseholder and which she cannot pay for out of her combined family income of£6 10s. per week.

Sir J. Crowder: In this case the ground rent payable to the Commissioners is £7 per year, and the lease has 33 years to run. The Commissioners could not undertake repairs which are not their responsibility but those of a lessee who bought a lease with full knowledge of her obligations.

Mr. Parkin: It is all very well talking about "full knowledge of her obligations," but have not we here a perfectly good property which will fall to pieces over the next 33 years because the Church Commissioners have no more sense than to let it get into the hands of such lessees and without giving any assistance in keeping it in repair?

Sir J. Crowder: I will make further inquiries, but as landlords I do not see what we can do in the matter at present, beyond seeing what the building society which has lent the money on the lease is prepared to do.

Mr. MacColl: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that if the Commissioners cannot be a little more co-operative and helpful they will be as unpopular as their predecessors in title, the Paddington Estates, who allowed the property to get into the state that it was?

Sir J. Crowder: These people are not tenants. They are leaseholders, and this lease has 33 years to run. It is quite a different position from that of a weekly tenant.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Proceedings on Government Business exempted, at this day's Sitting, from the provisions of Standing Order No. 1 (Sittings of the House).—[Mr. Crookshank.]

Orders of the Day — OIL IN NAVIGABLE WATERS BILL [Lords]

Order for Second Reading read.

3.31 p.m.

The Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation (Mr. John Boyd-Carpenter): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
During the recent years the problem of oil pollution of the sea has become increasingly serious. This is, in part at any rate, the inevitable consequence of the increasing use of oil for the propulsion of ships and the very considerable growth of tanker tonnage, but the problem has become increasingly difficult, and very considerable injury has been caused both to natural life and to the amenities of many of the coasts.
Consequently, a good deal of thought has been given in recent years to the question of what measures should be taken to improve the position. In 1952, my right hon. Friend who is now Secretary of State for the Colonies appointed a committee, under a very distinguished official, to investigate the problem. In 1953, the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan)—whom I am very glad to see in his place—organised, and presided over, an unofficial international gathering on this subject. If the hon. Gentleman will allow me to say so, I think that he ought to be congratulated both on his initiative in organising that conference and on the very valuable work which his committee did. both in respect of its recommendations and in the mobilisation of public opinion. The spirit in which it was conducted is well exemplified, I think, by the fact that the hon. Gentleman was good enough to ask my right hon. Friend the present Colonial Secretary to open the conference, which my right hon. Friend duly did.
These earlier steps were followed last year by an international conference which was held in London and which was attended by representatives of 42 different countries. It is as a result of the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution of the Sea by Oil, arrived at at that conference, that this Bill—though it goes a good deal further in some respects

than the convention recommendations—is now brought forward.
I do not think that the spirit in which this matter is being approached can be better set out than in the words which were spoken by the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East in opening the unofficial conference to which I have referred. He said:
For 30 years we have watched our seas, rivers, coastline and beaches becoming foul and polluted through the discharge overboard of waste oil by ships and tankers. Wild life has suffered; local authorities have incurred heavy expenses in cleansing; hard-earned holidays have been spoiled.
I think that that sums up in very few sentences the general aspects of the problem.
As I mentioned, the conference which met in London last year, and resulted in a Convention, is being followed, in this country, by this Bill. I understand that the French Government are to introduce a Bill in their Chamber and that action is being taken, certainly by the Swedes and probably by the Danes and the Belgians in the near future. I very much hope that the action which we are taking today will help to stimulate and encourage the other nations concerned to take similar steps. In fact, this Bill does go a good deal further than would be necessary merely to ratify the Convention. That is an indication of the seriousness with which Her Majesty's Government, and I think the House as a whole, view this problem.
It might be of help if I gave some explanation of the way in which the Bill seeks to deal with this inevitably very complex problem. On the face of it, I am afraid, the Bill is somewhat complicated—though I have honestly done my best to get it in as simple and clear a form as possible. It is, none the less, a complex subject since, apart from anything else, we have to build on the foundation of the Act of 1922 which this Bill proposes to repeal and re-enact as part of this much wider present Measure. It may also be of assistance to the House if I mention that I have placed in the Library a number of charts, both on a large and small scale, which set out clearly the sea areas affected by the Schedule to the Bill.
Perhaps I may turn now to the Bill itself and say a word or two about one or two of its principal provisions. The


first point I should make clear is the difference in scope between this Bill and the 1922 Act which it replaces. That Act was confined in its provisions to our own territorial waters, and it has become increasingly apparent that, with the distance that oil can move on the sea and the increasing quantities of oil being placed in the sea, a prohibition of that sort did not give adequate protection.
This Bill consequently seeks to go much further and to provide by international agreement for much wider cover than our own territorial waters, but, of course, there remains the fact that we ourselves have jurisdiction over foreign ships in respect of what they do only when they are within our territorial waters. The Bill, however, does, so far as British ships are concerned, extend the cover previously confined to our territorial waters to very much wider areas of the sea, and it is a necessary part of the Convention arrangements that foreign countries will do the same in respect of their ships.
I think it will be easiest if I take Clauses 1 and 2 together. They make it an offence to discharge any of the persistent types of oil from United Kingdom registered ships in the area specified in the Schedule to the Bill. Those areas are based on the provisions of the Convention. The prohibited sea areas which are set out in the Schedules are those agreed to in the Convention. There is one exception—the waters of the zone covering the Continent of Australia. Some difficulty has been experienced in precisely defining those waters and the question of their final designation has, therefore, been left over to be effected by regulation made under the powers provided in this Bill.
From the Schedule the House will see that different areas of the sea are prescribed for tankers and for dry cargo ships—that for tankers being considerably the larger, and, in particular, so far as these islands are concerned, going out very much further into the North Atlantic. The reason for this distinction springs directly from the Convention. I must tell the House quite frankly that Her Majesty's Government would have preferred to have applied to all ships the areas designated for tankers, but in the course of international negotiations, as the House knows, if agreement is to be reached it is neces-

sary sometimes to make concessions to the other parties' point of view. Although, as I have said, we would rather have made the two areas coterminous, it was necessary in the course of negotiation to make this concession.
I do not think it will have very much adverse practical effect, because in this context the ships with which it is particularly important to deal are the tankers. That is not because oil discharged from other ships cannot be a menace—it certainly can be—but the danger in respect of dry cargo ships generally, though not always, arises from discharge of ballast from tanks contaminated with oil.
I understand that it is very unlikely that such discharges of ballast would be made in the North Atlantic area, at present only designated in the Bill for tankers, for this reason: ballast is carried to assure the trim of the ship, and, therefore, it is unlikely that the master would wish to discharge that ballast when so far out at sea. The whole purpose of ballast being to maintain the trim of the ship, it would probably be somewhat dangerous to discharge it until close into the coast. Consequently, the fact that a sea area far out into the Atlantic is not designated so far for dry cargo ships, though it is logically a little odd, is unlikely to have any serious practical effect.
If hon. Members will look at the Schedule, they will see also that the prohibited areas under the Convention have been divided into four parts, each of the separate parts relating separately to dry cargo ships and to tankers. The parts to which I am now referring are Parts I and II, which relate to waters which directly affect the British Isles, and parts III and IV, which relate to waters which affect other countries.
The reason for that differentiation is this. Power is taken under the Bill to bring different parts of it into effect at different times, and it is our intention as soon as the Bill becomes law, if Parliament in its wisdom decides to make it law, to bring into effect the prohibition in respect of waters affecting the British Isles. Those are the waters in Parts I and II of the Schedule. In other words, United Kingdom ships, which are the only ships with which we can deal outside territorial waters, will not be permitted to pollute waters which


affect this country, as soon as the Bill becomes law, and that probition will not have to await the Convention as a whole coming into force.
The remaining waters covered by the Convention—that is, the waters affecting the other parties to it—will be protected as far as United Kingdom ships are concerned as soon as the Convention is ratified. That will give to other countries additional encouragement to proceed as speedily as possible towards ratification, which I am sure is what this House hopes to see.
I may add in this connection that the British shipping industry is already on a voluntary basis complying, so far as is possible, with these restrictions in respect of those waters, and perhaps this would be a convenient moment for me to express the gratitude of the Government to the shipping industry of this country for the very real spirit of co-operation which it has shown and for the help which it has given us both in technical and administrative matters in bringing this Measure forward. The shipowners have shown in a matter which can involve quite considerable cost to them a very fine level of public spirit, and it is a public spirit which merits the approbation of this House.
I have, I hope, made our intentions on this part of the Bill clear, which is the explanation of our breaking down in the Schedule of the Convention areas into those which affect the British Isles and those which do not. It is our intention when the Bill becomes law to apply the prohibition to the areas which affect the United Kingdom as soon as possible, leaving the remaining Convention areas until the ratification of the Convention.
The other important Clause, apart from machinery, is Clause 3, which makes new and up-to-date provision covering the discharge of oil into our territorial waters, whether from a ship or from shore establishments. As I have, I hope, made clear in respect of those territorial waters, we affirm and maintain our right to apply the provisions of the Bill to ships of all registers and not merely those of the United Kingdom register.
I hope I have made it clear that we would have liked the Convention to have gone even further and, in particular, to have covered wider areas of sea. I think, however, that there is a real possibility of development in that direction.
Last year's international conference agreed that a further conference should be held within three years, and we therefore thought it wise to provide in the Bill itself, in particular in Clause 2 (8), for the designation of further sea areas for the purpose of prohibition, in order to give effect to any subsequent Convention. In other words, if international agreement to extend those areas can be reached at a subsequent Convention, it will be possible to apply the provisions of this Bill to those areas by regulation made under this Bill.
A parallel provision relates to protection of our coasts and territorial waters. If it is necessary, in order to protect them, to extend the area covered to further areas of sea, power is also taken under I he Bill so to extend it by regulation, and, as was made clear in another place, the area of the sea which we have perhaps particularly in mind is what is colloquially called "the hole in the North Sea."
If hon. Members will consult the charts, they will see that there is a small vase-shaped area in the middle of the North Sea which is not designated under the Convention, and it may be necessary to apply, so far as the United Kingdom ships are concerned, the prohibitions of this Bill to that area with the necessary modifications that there may be to make sure that the position is held fairly between them and foreign ships. That matter was explored in another place, and my noble Friend the Paymaster-General made our intentions on that matter abundantly clear.
Perhaps I ought also—though this is a Bill which contains a good many points which are, perhaps, rather Committee points—to mention Clause 5. That gives the Minister power to make regulations requiring British ships to be fitted with the equipment necessary to prevent discharge of oil or mixtures containing oil. The very large variations in the type of ship make it inevitable that that should be done by regulation.
It is also necessary, in particular, to take power to prescribe the details and efficiency of the separators which will have to be installed for this purpose. One has also to take into account that this is a Bill which, as my noble Friend said in another place, covers craft from the "Queen Mary" to a rowing boat, and it


is, therefore, necessary when one is prescribing the installation of machinery of this sort, to take powers of modification by regulation, otherwise one may find oneself in the position of prescribing the impossible.
The general approach will be, as was also indicated in another place, that we shall proceed forthwith with the testing of various types of separator. We shall seek to experiment with a view to ascertaining the standard to be prescribed, with the objective of prescribing it by regulation in some three years' time.

Mr. Edward Shackleton: I am sorry to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman, but when he drafts the regulations will he bear in mind the necessity to make them sufficiently flexible to allow of the use of experimental equipment? There is still quite a lot of possibility of improvement in various types of technical equipment.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: That is one of the reasons, as I think the hon. Gentleman appreciates, for seeking to do this by regulation. We shall have to prescribe standards of efficiency by regulation. It will not be good enough to say that someone must fit a separator unless it is a separator capable of a certain performance. The idea of the time lag—the three-year period which I mentioned—and of the power of regulation is precisely what I think the hon. Member has in mind—to enable experiments to be made to see which is the most efficient and economical type. I agree with what I think is behind the hon. Gentleman's question—that scientific progress in these machines has not yet reached the ultimate development by any manner of means, and, to use his own phrase, we want to keep the position flexible.
Under Clause 8, we also seek to deal with the provision of facilities in harbours for the reception of oily residues from ships. I think that is the technical term. The Clause confers general powers on harbour authorities to provide these facilities and provides for reasonable charges to be made for the use of them. It also provides what, frankly, is only a last resort—for powers being given to the Minister to give directions to harbour authorities to exercise these powers in respect of the reception of oily residues from ships other than tankers.
In a Bill of this sort it is always necessary to make provision for penalties. Under the 1922 Act, which, of course, dealt only with territorial waters, the maximum penalty was a fine of £100, and cases could be dealt with only summarily. In view both of the amount of damage which a discharge of oil can do and of the saving of cost which a big ship can effect by discharging oil into the sea, it is, I think, clear that those penalties are, in present circumstances, quite inadequate.
Provision is, therefore, made in Clause 6 for a maximum fine of £1,000 on summary conviction. That is probably as high a figure as ought to be laid down for a penalty imposed by a summary court, but provision is also made for trial on indictment, and in that case, as hon. Members will see, no limit is prescribed for the fine. There are precedents for that, the most appropriate being the precedents under the Merchant Shipping Acts. When one considers in the case, for example, of a big tanker, the amount of money involved, it is difficult to prescribe a limit on a fine which would either not be so high as to seem oppressive or so low as to be ineffective.
I considered, at the same time, whether provision ought not also to be made for sentences of imprisonment. This is a difficult point. The persons guilty of offences are either the owners or the masters of ships. In the case of most of the ships concerned, the owners are limited companies, to whom, of course, for better or worse, the penalty of imprisonment cannot be applied. Generally, therefore, it comes to a question of masters, and while I considered whether imprisonment should be added, I came to the conclusion that it ought not to be added.
As I have indicated, this is the first Bill that any of the convention countries has introduced. In view of that, and of the leading position which this country has in the world of shipping, it is at least possible that in drafting their penal provisions foreign countries will tend to follow the line which we are taking. I came to the conclusion that there would be difficulties in prescribing imprisonment in those cases if the consequence were to be sentences of imprisonment in foreign ports on the masters of British ships, and I formed the view, which I hope the House will accept—although if hon. Members feel any doubts about it we can


discuss it in Committee—that, on balance, monetary penalties were the answer in this case.
Prohibitions of this kind have, of course, to provide for the exceptional cases in which breach of the ban on discharges is justifiable. Clause 4 therefore lays down those conditions. It provides that where a discharge of oil is necessary for the safety of the ship or preventing damage to her or for saving life, no offence shall be committed. That seems to be an inevitable and reasonable provision. But, as the House will see from a study of the Clause, fairly stringent conditions have to be satisfied for that defence to be made in those cases.
There is also a provision which is now Clause 4 (5), which was inserted in another place, to deal with the rather complicated situation which arises in connection with oil refineries. As hon. Members may have seen from the debates in another place, certain processes in the refining of oil involve the discharge of an effluent which, as I understand it, in the present state of development inevitably contains a small quantity of oil. I understand that it is absolutely impossible for it to be purified to the point at which it does not contain oil. We have, therefore, provided, again under rather stringent conditions, in Clause 4 (5), for this discharge not to be an offence if, in substance, no pollution of the sea results.
Subsection (6) of the Clause deals with another situation which has to be dealt with—the removal of wrecks by certain public authorities. In moving a wreck which is an obstruction to navigation, the authority may very well cause the wreck to discharge oil, and it would be quite unreasonable that the responsible public authority engaged on that work should find itself prosecuted under the Bill if oil were accidentally discharged

Mr. Frank Bowles: Supposing the "Queen Mary" discharged oil in the middle of the night while going across the Atlantic; how does the Minister propose to show that it was the "Queen Mary" which did it and not some other ship? How is it proposed to police these provisions?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: That is a question of enforcement. I am glad that the hon. Gentleman mentioned it, because

we have made some study of the problem. One of the most profitable lines, we have found, has been the tracing of oil on the sea from the air. An interesting experiment was conducted last summer when officials of my Department went in an aeroplane over the Channel following an arrangement that a tanker should discharge small quantities of different types of oil on the sea. We came to the conclusion that one could satisfactorily identify the type of oil by observation from the air to a quite surprising degree.
That will at least help in enforcement, but, as the hon. Member knows from his own experience, in all these measures enforcement is a very difficult problem. It is particularly difficult in cases of discharge in the open sea, but I think that in some degree, at any rate, we shall be able to make effective observation. In view of the seriousness of the problem, we must certainly try.

Mr. Shackleton: Surely the effective sanction is the keeping of records by the ships, is it not?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Of course. For that purpose we have the machinery Clauses, which I have not reached. The keeping of records and making it an offence to keep them other than accurately is also a protection. I should not like to say, nor would it be fair to say, that it is an absolute guarantee of enforcement, because if people wantonly discharged oil that might not be recorded in the records, although that failure to keep proper records would itself be an offence. I cannot believe that the very famous ship which the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Bowles) mentioned would be at all likely to commit such an offence. The company to which she belongs has a very good record in this, as in all other respects.
As I was about to say, a large part of the rest of the Bill deals with the necessary machinery for enforcement and operation, with the keeping of records, the falsification of which, as hon. Members will see, is an offence made punishable by imprisonment, and with the provision of facilities of one sort and another. They are largely machinery Clauses, and I do not think it would be fair to the House if I were to enlarge upon them at any length on Second Reading. We shall, I hope, have an opportunity of discussing them in Committee.
I hope, however, that I have said enough to assure right hon. and hon. Members that this is a sincere and sensible attempt to deal with what is a severe and increasing problem. I have made no secret of the fact that I hope that before long we shall be able to carry our friends abroad even further in the same direction. That is why, as I have already said, we make provision in the Bill to enable us to extend it as and when further international agreement becomes possible.
But I think it is satisfactory—and I hope the House will share this view—that we who are, after all, the leading maritime country in the world should be giving the lead in proposing legislation. Not only is our island particularly vulnerable to the pollution by oil of its coasts, but we also operate far more ships than anybody else, and it is, therefore, incumbent upon us to set an example. I am very glad that, officially and unofficially, people in this country have given the lead; that the Convention, which this Bill seeks, among other things, to enable us to ratify, was held in London; and that the British Government are the first Government to lay legislationon the Table of their Parliament.
The Bill carries out, and more than carries out, our obligations under the Convention. I trust not only that the House will give it a Second Reading and, in due course, pass it through its necessary stages, but that this example will be followed by the other nations which attended the conference and that, as a result, we may by international co-operation succeed in doing something to remedy the very serious problem which oil presents on the beaches and waters of the world.

4.1 p.m.

Mr. James Callaghan: I wish to say with what satisfaction I have heard the Minister introduce this Bill. We on this side of the House certainly regard it as a sincere and genuine lead given by Her Majesty's Government—I was going to say "in this field"—in these waters. We certainly feel that the Bill merits our broad support and it will have our broad support.
Until the Minister completed his speech I must confess that I did not wholly understand the Bill. I thought I knew

a little about the subject until I read it. I am much obliged to the right hon. Gentleman for his patient and courteous explanation. He has certainly made the Schedule clearer than it was and also Clauses 1 and 2, and I am indebted to him for doing so.
The right hon. Gentleman was quite right in saying that the changing economic pattern of our trade has rendered the 1922 Act out of date. That Act was drafted at a time when coal burners were in the majority and there was very little crude oil coming to this country. Such oil as did come was mostly refined and there were not the same problems that we have now. But, with the development in post-war days of the great oil refinery projects with refineries at Coryton, Fawley, Llandarcy, and the Isle of Grain, bringing to the United Kingdom about 28 million tons of crude oil last year, there is no doubt that we have created a new problem. With the change-over in the case of cargo ships and passenger ships from coal to oil-burning we see the need for a Measure of this sort.
I therefore acknowledge the speed with which the Government have acted in bringing forward this legislation following the signing, only a year ago, of the Convention. I do not suppose I shall ever say it again—and I certainly have never said it in the past—but particularly I acknowledge the promptitude and energy with which the present Colonial Secretary acted. It was undoubtedly his initiative and the way in which he drove this matter along which brought it to the stage where the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation, also using his ingenuity and skill, was able to steer it into the legislative programme. All those things are important.
I should like, also, to reinforce the tribute the Minister paid to Mr. Faulkner, chairman of the original committee which produced a report, a distinguished civil servant in the Ministry of Transport, who produced a document of which there is no counterpart in the rest of the world and which shows a degree of knowledge which, so far as I know, has not been reproduced anywhere else. His patient work at the formal international conference held last year, with that of the Permanent Secretary to the Department, undoubtedly had much to do with its relative success.
I use the word "relative" because, like the Minister, I should have liked the


Convention to have gone further. From one point of view this Bill is no more than a palliative—in the sense that the Faulkner Committee's Report said quite clearly, as did the international conference, that the only real remedy for stopping pollution of the beaches and the seashore, and stopping the oiling of birds with the consequential suffering, is to stop pumping oil into the sea. That is the only solution to this problem. I regret very much that other countries at the conference last year were not willing to go so far as Her Majesty's Government were ready to go in that direction.
There is no doubt that Her Majesty's Government had to work very hard at the conference to get a number of other countries even to sign the Convention which was eventually signed. It is still true that only 20 out of 42 have signed. That is a measure of the lead we have given and the lead which the ship owners of this country have given. I wish to associate myself with the tribute the right hon. Gentleman paid to the far-sighted approach of our ship owners and tanker owners. They have come a long way since the days when I first raised this question and was told that they were not pumping oil into the sea, but that it was coming from the breaking up of wrecks in post-war gales. They readily acknowledged that perhaps there was something more to the problem than that. In the Convention, signed by 20 nations in London last year, British ship owners, including their representative, Viscount Runciman, gave a lead to ship owners in other countries who seemed inclined to hang back.
I know we have the co-operation of the masters and officers of tankers and other ships in preventing the discharge of oil at sea. At the annual conference of the Navigators and Engineering Officers Union, on 7th December last, the following resolution was adopted unanimously:
This general meeting welcomes the action taken by the Government in dealing with oil pollution of the seas and its harmful consequences on beaches and bird life, and requests the Council to ask all members to co-operate in carrying out the requirements of the Convention designed to abate the nuisance.
I am sure that the whole House will be glad to know that the union has made that public and that it is getting its members to co-operate in this matter. There is no doubt that ships' officers have an

exceedingly important part to play in this matter.
I was very interested to hear the Minister giving the list of nations which seemed likely to follow our action in ratifying the Convention. I think "ratifying" is the proper word, although I am always a little uncertain about these terms. He mentioned France, Sweden, Denmark and Belgium. That is a good start and it may not be wholly undue to the fact that the Council of Europe has been interesting itself in this problem and has taken a lead in calling upon its member nations to report to it by next May on what action they are taking. Here is a useful field of activity in which the Council of Europe has been able to play a part.
I would add one more to the list of nations read out by the Minister. I have a letter signed by the Bundesminister for Transport, Dr. Seebohm, dated 2nd March, in which he says:
The preparations for the German ratification are sufficiently advanced to make it probable that the draft Bill can be conveyed to the Foreign Office and the Cabinet approximately in mid-April. … As far as we are concerned, the work still outstanding on the agreement is so well advanced that we shall be able to carry out our arrangement with the British participants to ratify, shortly after the United Kingdom has done so.
I hope that we shall soon be reaching the quota of nations necessary to bring the Convention into force. That will be a great day.
On the debit side—it is perhaps easier for me to say this than it is for the Minister—I regret that neither the United States of America nor Panama has yet signed the Convention. It seems to me that the United States has a substantial interest in this matter, for different reasons, because of its continental shelf and the pumping of oil. It may well be that in the course of a few years the United States will find that its own coasts will be fouled to an extent that may bring the U.S.A. into the forefront of the movement to prevent pollution.
I very much hope that the United States and Panama, both of whom are major ship-owning countries—I do not single out the small countries who have not signed, but the United States and Panama are the two major countries who have not signed—will themselves take action very soon.
While dealing with international matters, I should like to ask the Minister


whether the committee which he has set up will keep as close contact as possible with the U.S.S.R. At the international conference, the U.S.S.R. and Poland were two of the countries who were quite forthcoming in this matter and their representatives seemed to be ready to go a lot further than some of the other nations.
The reason for my asking the Minister whether this committee will keep in contact with Russia is that it seemed from what its representatives said as though Russia itself had fears about the consequences of oil pollution upon fish and plankton. The issue is as yet unproved. Such evidence as we have is negative. Although the Secretary of the Association of Sea Fisheries has said that he believes that the discharge of oil has an effect upon fish and upon plankton, we have no real scientific evidence. Nevertheless, if the Russians possess evidence, I should like to see us co-operating with them to find out what information they have and how we can help each other.
I now turn more to the particular consequences of the discharge of oil. I do not know whether it is generally realised that the amount of oily water that is discharged from a medium size tanker when cleaning its tanks can be, in terms of oil, about 20 tons. When we consider the number of tankers and the voyages they make to and from this country every year, it is clear that 20 to 30 tons of sludge—which is, of course, diffused among a larger amount of water—discharged overboard on every voyage can make a very great difference to the state of cleanliness of our coasts and beeches. The problem, therefore, is a very substantial one.
The disappointing feature, to me, is that because other countries were not prepared to go as far as Her Majesty's Government, the zones into which the tankers can pump their oil are still so narrowly drawn that tankers will be pumping their sludge as close to our shores as the Bay of Biscay. The set of the tides is such that certainly that oil will be carried on to the coast of France, and some of it may well reach the south-west of England and our other coasts. I very much regret that we have not been able to go further in getting the zones made wider.
My hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Bowles) raised the question of enforcement. I share his scepticism. I

think it will be very difficult indeed to enforce these rules if people wish to break them; because, as the Minister rightly said, the man who wantonly pumps sludge overboard will not be backward in failing to fill up his log book showing that he has pumped it overboard. We have to rely upon co-operation and upon the international climate of opinion in this matter, and I believe that, thanks to Her Majesty's Government's lead and to the action of the unofficial international committee, of which I have had the honour to be chairman for some time, we are awakening people's attention to this subject in countries other than our own.
Certainly, the dramatic happenings of a few weeks ago, when about 700 square miles of the North Sea was covered by oil as a result of a tanker going aground and having to pump the oil overboard, brought the consequences of this discharge home to people much more vividly than many other things could have done.
Another feature with which the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds is very concerned is the oiling of birds and the destruction of wild life. The Society has been very active in this matter and has given the committee a great deal of support. I have a report from the Society in which it says that last winter the oiling of birds and the destruction that had to follow from the oiling of hundreds of birds—in bad winters it runs into thousands, if not tens of thousands, of birds—was reported from 25 counties. That shows to what extent this menace has spread. If birds are found off all those counties, washed up and covered in oil, it equally follows that the pleasure beaches of those 25 counties must also be suffering to some extent.
I should like to know from the Government what discussions they are having with the oil companies about the provision of facilities, both here and overseas. The oil companies are left out of the Bill, for, I think, a good reason, but there is no doubt that a heavy responsibility falls upon them. Although it will now be a criminal offence, as I understand, for the oil companies to allow any discharge of sludge in these waters, nevertheless they have a heavy responsibility for their overseas depots. I should like to hear from the Joint Parliamentary Secretary what influence he is bringing to bear upon them to provide proper reception facilities at their overseas loading points.
I should like to know whether the national committee or some other body is co-ordinating research into the possible economic uses of the sludge or into the efficient methods of destroying it. About a year ago, I had some correspondence with Sir Ben Lockspeiser, Secretary of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, who then had to say that, as far as the Department could see, the sludge was virtually indestructible. No way had been found of dealing with it in large quantities.
If all the sludge is to be brought to these islands and not pumped into the sea—if the sea is no longer to be used as a dustbin—what are we to do with it? The harbour authorities will have to make arrangements for disposal. I should like the Minister to say what is in mind for this, and whether research is going on to discover what commercial uses there may be for this waste sludge.
My hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Mr. Hayman), who will wind up the debate for the Opposition, will deal particularly with the position of local authorities, of which he has great experience, so I will say nothing about them. But I would point out to the Minister that this problem of polluting the waters, which we hope to solve by international co-operation, is yet another illustration of the manner in which an attempted national solution of these matters is creating great difficulties. I should like to throw out two or three thoughts to the Minister on this subject.
The Peruvian Government claimed that its territorial waters were 200 miles wide when it wanted recently to bring in Mr. Onassis' whalers. The Russians claim that their territorial waters are 12 miles wide. We have a limit of three miles. The international lawyers are now arguing on the distance from the shore over which a country may extend its jurisdiction for the purpose of exploiting the sea bed—I believe it is called the continental shelf; that is, the area outside a nation's territorial waters but contiguous to them and extending to the economic limit at which the sea bed can be worked. Of course, the extent of territorial limits becomes very important if there are large oil-bearing deposits below the surface of the sea. One estimate I have been told is that there are 10 million square miles of ocean in which there may be oil-bearing deposits.
Then, of course—and here I come right up against the biggest case of all, although I am not criticising but merely showing the difficulties—a nation can, as it were, rope off an area of 7,000 square miles of sea and say, "We are going to explode a hydrogen bomb and everyone must please keep out." All these difficulties are related to the problem of trying to get some international action for dealing with what is undoubtedly an international problem, and a problem that can be solved internationally.
They could be overcome very much more easily if there were an organisation of the United Nations responsible for handling the problem. The Convention which was signed last year said that the United Nations should be responsible for collecting further data, for carrying out research, for co-ordinating information, and so on. I am sorry to say that the report which was made by the Secretary-General, following the Convention, seemed to me to be one which could be described as "passing the buck."
I do not feel that the United Nations has taken up the problem. Had it not been for the British Government the problem would still have been awaiting legislation, still awaiting action. The question of the international control of our seas will become even greater in the future than it has been in the past, and it is to international co-operation that we shall have to look to find its solution.
We shall have some Amendments to move to the Bill in Committee. They will be mostly concerned with matters of machinery. There will be no factious opposition, because we are as anxious as the Government to see the Bill on the Statute Book, but there are possibilities we shall invite the Committee to explore. Some of them have been dealt with already in another place, where the Bill has been materially improved as a result of the very painstaking work there done upon it.
The Bill is a significant milestone on the road to complete prohibition, but we shall not be happy until Her Majesty's Government have persuaded other Governments, we hope by 1957, when the next Convention is due, to agree to total prohibition, so that we can begin to free our seas and beaches, shores and coastlines of the foul sludge which has been despoiling them increasingly during the


last few years. We are very happy to give our support to the Bill, and we wish it a speedy passage through the House.

4.23 p.m.

Colonel Sir Leonard Ropner: I wish to add my congratulations to the Minister of Transport on the clear way in which he explained the provisions of this complicated and highly technical Bill, and I should like also to pay a tribute to the generous, moderate and reasonable way in which the hon. Gentleman the Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) has spoken for the Opposition.
Following the example of a noble Lord in another place, I must confess my interest in the Bill, and, moreover, I must confess to being a potential criminal, as anyone must be who is concerned in the management of ships. I am fairly sure I can speak for all ship owners when I say that I very much hope that the House will accord the Bill a Second Reading without a dissentient voice.
For many years, and quite voluntarily, British ship owners have been taking action to mitigate the nuisance of oil pollution, and in the passage of the Bill through another place many noble Lords paid well-deserved tributes to the efforts which British shipowners have made to reduce oil pollution. Today, the Minister has added his word of praise, and so did the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East. Ship owners, being human beings in spite of what people occasionally say, are appreciative of the recognition of their co-operation, and I am very ready to give an assurance that their further co-operation can be relied upon.
I shall make a very short speech, but I should like to utter two words of warning. Neither of them is novel, and both of them have been touched on today; but both do need emphasis. The first is that the important question of how to stop oil pollution is not nearly as easy to answer as many people seem to think. One has only to read the most able Report of the Faulkner Committee on the Prevention of Pollution of the Sea by Oil to be convinced that this is so. The second is that this problem cannot be wholly and finally resolved unless we have full international agreement and cooperation. Not until full international cooperation and agreement is achieved can

there really be a solution of this extremely difficult problem.
Later, I hope I may be given an opportunity of elaborating those points, and it may be that from the point of view of British ship owners there may be some Amendments which we shall desire to discuss with the Minister. Meanwhile, I repeat that the Bill is warmly welcomed by British shipowners, who are not unhopeful that other nations will follow the lead that the Bill will give.

4.28 p.m.

Mr. Edward Shackleton: I am sure that it gives satisfaction to the House that the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Barkston Ash (Sir L. Ropner), as a distinguished representative of the ship owners, and with his knowledge, should give such unqualified support to the Bill. The fact that possibly he will move Amendments on behalf of the shipping industry, I am quite sure, is not a suggestion that the industry will not still wholeheartedly support the purposes of the Bill.
I welcome the Bill. I congratulate the Minister, and I congratulate also my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan), who has played no small part in encouraging this international agreement; but in doing so I should like to echo the remarks of the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Barkston Ash about the difficulties that still lie ahead. I have read in the Official Report the speeches of the Government's spokesman in another place, and today I have heard the Minister, who, I am sure, would be the first to admit that the mere passing of legislation does not solve the problem. None the less, there does seem to be a general opinion that provided we do pass legislation all the rest will follow.
The Government spokesman—I think the Paymaster-General—in another place said very simply that there is, of course, quite a practical solution to the problem of oil pollution, namely, not to put oil into the sea. That seems to me to be merely stating the problem all over again. An immense amount of work will have to be done to make the Bill effective.
I am in full agreement that unquestionably the first stage is legislation. We had to bring in the necessary measures to prevent and penalise actions calculated


to lead to oil pollution. At the same time, we have an obligation to see whether what we say is to be an offence can be avoided in practice. I am not entirely happy about a number of aspects of the Bill, but before going into the practical snags I should like to say what all hon. Members must feel—that it is unfortunate that there is to be a kind of oil well in the North Sea into which people can pour their oily ballast, an area in which it will be permitted, in certain circumstances, to dispose of oily residue. I understand the reason for that and I am not criticising the Government, because I realise that they have gone further in the Bill than they need have done following upon the Convention.
It would be a mistake to assume that the coming into force of these provisions, even if adopted in similar terms by other countries, will solve the problem of oil pollution. This is only the first step. It is a very big and important step because it establishes this principle, but I hope that we shall not be in any way complacent about the Bill. I am sure that the hon. and gallant Member for Barkston Ash will be the first to agree that a great deal of the problem will lie in the operating procedures on board ship. Although we welcome the resolution passed on behalf of Merchant Navy officers, that does not alter the fact that this matter is a great deal more complicated than is ever likely to appear in our discussions in the House. There are many factors and practices at sea which will have to be looked at if the Bill is to be effective.
On one point of definition I should like to have from the Minister an assurance, which, I believe, was given in another place, that in the words in Clause I, which states that
if it is proved that there were not less than one hundred parts of the oil in a million parts of the mixture, it shall be conclusively presumed that the oil in the mixture fouled the surface of the sea;
the words "surface of the sea" are not the decisive factor. Although oil can only rarely be made to sink, it is not beyond the bounds of human invention to make it sink so that it is below the surface but, in due course, comes back to plague us on the coast. I take it that the act of proving that the oil has been discharged is enough to assume that an offence has been committed even if the

oil immediately goes below the surface. I hope that the Joint Parliamentary Secretary will make that clear when he replies to the debate.
Clause 5 provides that the Minister may make regulations requiring ships to be fitted with equipment to prevent or reduce the discharge of oil and mixtures containing oil into the sea. It is entirely right that the Minister should have power to prescribe the type of equipment which should be regarded as satisfactory. The Minister said that the desirability of flexibility was one of the reasons why he wanted to prescribe by regulations rather than by Act of Parliament, but I do not think that a regulation is necessarily a very flexible instrument for doing this. It is quite possible to have regulations enforced in a way which will have a serious limiting effect on new types of equipment.
I realise that this is a Committee point, but we are in a formative stage in experiments with separators and other types of equipment and it would be very unfortunate if people who are experimenting with this equipment, especially small people, found themselves up against a regulation of the Ministry contained in notices to planners or in some other form.
There seems to me to be a very easy assumption that all one has to do to solve this problem of pollution is to fit a separator on a ship. I hope that the Minister does not hold that delusion. It is quite possible to separate water from oil, but one may still have contained in the great body of oil a stable emulsion of oil and water which cannot be separated. No amount of putting it through separators will enable the water to be separated, and that particular mixture may not be burnable. Salt water can be very destructive material to burn in a boiler of a ship and may go a long way towards ruining the refractories.
It is essential that further research should be done in this matter. I have seen nowhere in any of the reports, other than a bare mention in the original Faulkner Report, an attempt to deal with this problem of a stable emulsion of oil and water. It may be popularly supposed that oil and water do not mix, but they certainly do mix extremely well in certain circumstances and may produce a stable emulsion with which it may be very difficult to deal.
One of the Clauses of the Bill places an obligation upon harbour authorities to receive oily residues, but they are not required to receive untreated ballast water. Do I take it that they would receive all these different emulsions? If not, will the ship which is suffering from them resist the temptation of putting them over the side? This is a complicated problem. I may not have put it as clearly as I might, because I do not wholly understand it myself, but there is need for a great deal of research into it.
I hope that the Government will not be satisfied either with the Faulkner Report or the research done so far. This was a matter which we considered briefly in the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee. The Minister will remember that we urged that some form of co-ordinated research body should be set up. Under the Convention a permanent co-ordinating body was set up, but has it the facilities for doing the research which the Faulkner Committee was unable to do?
There is some difficulty because comparatively little independent research is being carried out at present. A great bulk of the research is controlled by the oil companies. My hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Mr. Dodds) is not here to support me, and I do not propose to make a general attack on the oil companies, but it is a fact that their scientific views at times coincide remarkably with their commercial policies. I could give some instances of that, but I do not want to pursue the matter with malice. I merely say that it would be a fallacy to rely on research done by interested parties. I should like to see the Minister, so far as the Chancellor will allow him, taking this responsibility very seriously by having a section of his Ministry seeing that the necessary research is done. If it is difficult to do the research through existing bodies, I suggest that facilities be provided under D.S.I.R. to get on with the work.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East asked what use is to be made of some of the sludge deposits which may be left in the hands of harbour authorities. Hon. Members will know that at present quite a number of distressing nuisances are being committed by people taking this sludge and burning it in the middle of the countryside. I hope that the Ministry of

Transport or some other body will bear in mind the possibility of preventing both the waste and the nuisance that are involved.
The Government may have to do the reasearch work themselves, but it is certainly within the bounds of possibility that effective use may be made of a great deal of these sludge deposits. They vary enormously in their nature. There may be a considerable quantity of water in them and hard substance and sand. They can range from completely solid material to something with, say, the consistency of liver, or they may be liquid, and although they may seem pure solids there may be a lot of water in them; and I would urge that we do not waste this valuable material, which may still have a high calorific value even if it is not burnable in a ship's boiler. It might well be properly treated and used, and, therefore, I would like to echo the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East.
As this new equipment goes into the ships and as firms are called upon to install it, I would ask the Minister to keep an eye on its price. I am quite sure that one of the objectives of the Bill must be to make it more profitable for people to produce this equipment and develop and improve it on a competitive basis. But it is possible that a time may come, once the regulations come into force, when various ship owners will find they still lack the requisite equipment and there may be a tremendous rush to buy certain types of equipment at a time when the equipment is in very short supply.
I hope, therefore, that the right hon. Gentleman will consult the ship owners with a view to seeing that in putting into force these regulations he will bear in mind that there is an adequate supply of the equipment, and if there is no adequate supply he should stimulate it either through the National Research Development Corporation or other bodies and undertakings who may not be prepared to take all the risks themselves, but, with help, can go ahead and manufacture certain equipment.
There is one other point I should like to make. I feel that not enough use has been made of the experience of the Royal Navy in dealing with oily waste and, in particular, stable oil and water emulsions.
There was some reference to it in the Faulkner Report, and I note that the Royal Navy is exempt from the provisions of the Bill. Personally, I have no objection to exempting the Navy, because we can utterly rely upon it, if the First Lord guarantees that it will be done, to carry out proper measures to prevent oil pollution. The Navy has done a good deal of work on the problem, and I would urge the Ministry to consult a little more freely the experts who are in the Admiralty.
I welcome the Bill and congratulate the Government on the rapidity with which they have acted. I do not think any of us expected them to take these steps in such an encouraging way, and I hope that the Minister is satisfied with the reception given to the Bill by the House this afternoon.

4.44 p.m.

Sir Harold Roper: I desire to give my enthusiastic support to this Bill. It cuts across party lines, and it is very encouraging to hear the speeches which have been made from the other side of the House, in particular that by the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan), because he has been working hard in co-ordinating the opinions of interested bodies and also in initiating interest in overseas countries.
This question of oil pollution has aroused very deep concern amongst bird lovers and amongst bird protection societies. From my own experience of the 50 miles of Atlantic coastline which is included in my constituency, I know something of the havoc that it has created and is creating amongst our bird life.
Even more important in my constituency is the effect on the holiday industry. By far the greatest attraction of our part of the country as a holiday resort lies in its beaches, its coastline and its bathing facilities, and clearly a serious effect of oil pollution such as we have had in the past is to damage an important industry. Not only does it detract from the pleasure of the holiday, but it takes business away from those who cater for the holiday trade. Also, this oil pollution on the beaches does considerable damage to the internal equipment of the hotels, because it can be carried on the feet from the beaches to the hotel. So it will be seen how important this issue is to my constituency.
Last year we had a very bad summer, but one redeeming feature was that we had far less oil on our beaches than we have had for several years previously. One observer made the comment that there was no apparent reason for it, that be-because no legislation had been passed he presumed it was due to the fortuitous action of wind and tide. I take a very different view. First, I would say that in that change we can find some encouragement, because I believe it is a sign that a remedy is a practical possibility if we work on the right lines, and that the remedies which the Bill proposes are effective in part.
I would say emphatically that the first cause of the improvement was the vigour shown by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Colonies when he was Minister of Transport; secondly, there was the thoroughness of the work done by the Faulkner Committee; and, thirdly, there was the co-operation of the shipping companies in voluntarily applying the recommendations of the Faulkner Committee. No sooner had that Committee published its Report than the shipping industry recommended its members to do their utmost to adopt the proposals contained in it.
I am glad to pay that tribute to the shipping companies, because they have been taking a lead in this matter for over a quarter of a century. They have been taking not merely a paper interest but they have been taking action, and that has extended right through the shipping companies to the officers and crews of the tankers. I have independent evidence of that fact.
Last year, some hon. Members of this House visited a tanker belonging to one of the large international oil companies. Without declaring my interest in oil pollution, I asked the master of the tanker what was done with the sludge when the tanks were cleaned. What impressed me immediately was his pleasure at being asked the question. Obviously he took a pride in the way this matter was handled and the care with which instructions were carried out.
He went to his cabin and produced a copy of a chart showing the instructions of his company in regard to the prohibited area within which his oil sludge must not be pumped out. At once I recognised that chart as a copy of the


one contained in an appendix to the Faulkner Committee Report, the chart which we have been discussing in this debate.
That was my experience with one oil company. In conversation with an officer of another of our large tanker-owning oil companies, I was told that over the years they have only once found a tanker of their own pumping out oil in violation of the instructions of that company. I was told that the officer in question was degraded, which indicated that this company also took the matter seriously and was doing its best to avoid the nuisance. So one reaches the conclusion that our British oil companies are not, and have not been, the main culprits in this matter, which largely concerns oil companies.
A great deal of our oil is carried in chartered vessels. Representing North Cornwall, I am especially interested in the oil traffic which feeds Llandarcy Refinery. I obtained from the Parliamentary Secretary some figures of the oil traffic passing up the Bristol Channel and from these it appears that over six months 25 per cent. of the oil was being carried in foreign bottoms which represented 12 different nationalities.
I have been advised that the tanker companies do their utmost to encourage foreign-registered ships to comply with the regulations we apply to our own British ships. Each tanker is given a slip, of which I have a copy here, requesting the captain not to pump out oil in the prohibited zone. Everything possible is being done to encourage foreign tankers not to discharge their sludge into the water.
Clearly it is an international problem and it will only be possible to solve it internationally. The Faulkner Report is a thorough and excellent Report, presenting a series of recommendations in which those of us who have studied it find little to criticise, in the present state of our knowledge. Since those recommendations appear to offer the best solution of the problem, it was disappointing that the International Conference on Pollution of the Sea by Oil was unable to accept all of them. However, as my right hon. Friend said in opening this debate, it may be that we are in advance of the world in our approach to this problem and, though we may be dis-

appointed, we must not be surprised or discouraged that all the other countries have not been able to see eye to eye with us at once.
There were two main recommendations of the Faulkner Report which the International Conference was unable to accept. One was the reduction of the prohibited area. The hon. Member for Preston, South (Mr. Shackleton) mentioned the Bay of Biscay. In one respect it is unfortunate that this recommendation was not accepted, but I doubt whether, from our narrow British point of view, it is unfortunate. I say this because, from the figures in the chart, it would appear that the oil reaching the Bay of Biscay would go to the French coast and not to our coast. The "hole" in the North Sea represents probably the most important difference over the prohibited areas, and I have no doubt that that will be discussed in greater detail during the Committee stage of the Bill.
The second main recommendation of the Faulkner Committee Report which the Conference was unable to accept was the fixing of a date for the absolute prohibition of the discharge of oil into the sea. Resolution I of the proceedings of the International Conference reads:
The only entirely effective method known of preventing oil pollution is the complete avoidance of the discharge of persistent oils into the sea…
Nevertheless, the conference was unable to go further than to resolve that individual countries should do their best to bring about absolute prohibition of the discharge of oil into the sea as soon as possible.
However, the concluding sentence of the Resolution is very important. It states:
That this Conference are of the opinion that a further conference to review the matter in the light of experience of the working of the arrangements recommended by this Conference should be held within three years.
In the Bill the Minister takes powers to require separators to be installed in ships. I missed his words when he told us of his intention, but in another place it was clearly stated that it was an intention, by regulation, to set down that such should be made compulsory within three years. Bearing in mind that, as has been stated, it is not reasonable to require ships to install separators until there are


reasonable facilities in the ports for receiving sludge, I think that three years is probably a very suitable period.
Although the Bill is by no means a complete solution in that it does not go as far as the Faulkner Report, I believe that, in the circumstances of the limitations set by the International Conference, it goes as far as it is practicable to go. It is essential, when the Bill is passed, that we should keep well in the forefront of our minds the conference which is to take place within three years. I trust that my right hon. Friend will keep well in mind the fact that the whole matter is to be reviewed in the light of experience.
It seems to me that we must so apply the terms of the Bill that we shall gain as much experience as we can before that conference takes place. As the hon. Member for Preston, South impressed upon the House, what is important is that research should continue to be actively carried on. We want to make sure that when the conference takes place within three years there will be an overwhelming case to put before other countries in favour of positive prohibition of the discharge of oil into the sea.
This matter, as the hon. Member for Preston, South said, has been considered by the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee, and we have had a number of discussions about it, with particular emphasis on the importance of research. Already, during today's debate, many points requiring research have been brought out. For instance, is it a fact that these oils are persistent and indestructible and will go on for ever? It seems to me that if there is doubt about that, and I believe that doubts were expressed about it in the International Conference, it is a matter on which further research is required. The effect on fish life has also been mentioned; that is a matter into which research will no doubt take place.
There is also the question of the disposal of the sludge where no refinery is available. The hon. Member for Preston, South suggested that sludge was a very valuable product. I have no personal interest to declare in this matter, but I have in the past been associated with an oil company and, therefore, these refining matters are to some extent familiar to me. I have, moreover, discussed the disposal

of sludge from ships with the general manager of one of our big refineries which treats the sludge as a convenient means of getting rid of it but not to make a profit. I believe it is a fallacy to regard the sludge as a potentially highly-valuable product. Its value will about cover the cost of treating it.

Mr. Shackleton: I do not understand how the hon. Gentleman can say that it is a fallacy. He should specify the type of sludge to which he is referring. A number of sludges are burnt as fuel. It is a question whether they can be made to run, and whether sufficient of the dangerous impurities can be removed.

Sir H. Roper: I am talking about a refinery which habitually receives sludge from other ports round the country, and treats it. It is likely to treat it all in the mass instead of dealing with it according to variations in quality. From non-technical experience of oil refining, I visualise all the sludge being dumped into one tank; and then, by experience, the refinery determining the best way of treating it in order to get the best combination of products from it. That is perhaps a matter which may be pursued at a later date.
There are other points concerned with research. There is the possibility, for instance, of chemical treatment of the sludge, before it is put ashore, in order to render it less polluting. There is also the very important point of the type of separator to be used, and the development of a separator which will not be too expensive in the first place, which will be economical in operation, and which will give results.
Research is particularly required into the treatment of emulsions to effect the removal of a sufficient quantity of oil to make the water free from discharge. Of course, in a separator there is no difficulty in separating the free water from the free oil, but emulsions are a different problem, and there is room for research in that direction. There is also need for research into the removal of the last traces of salt water present in the oil, which may be injurious in the firing of a boiler.
In reply to a Question which I asked on 30th July last year, the names were given of the Committee appointed, again under Mr. Faulkner's chairmanship, in


terms of Resolution No. 7 of the International Conference, which said:
That Governments should create national committees to keep the problem of oil pollution under review and recommend practical measures for its prevention, including the carrying out of any necessary research.
I think that we may be quite certain from that—in fact, I know that my right hon. Friend will be able to tell us this—that the Committee is carrying on the necessary research.
I urge my right hon. Friend to take particular interest in the work of the Committee and in the research which it is doing, and I hope he will assure us that there will be no stinting of money, for a comparatively small amount is likely to be involved. It is important that the research work should go on without financial embarrassment so that in three years' time, when the next conference takes place, we shall be in possession of the best possible results to guide other countries in the consideration of the problem. I have great pleasure in giving my support to the Bill.

5.10 p.m.

Mr. W. A. Wilkins: The Bill has had a very kind reception, so much so that one felt like singing the "Hallelujah Chorus" for the benefit of the Minister. It will be not only approved in the House but welcomed throughout the country.
I listened with great interest to the hon. Member for Cornwall, North (Sir H. Roper), because I know most of the bays and beaches which are on the borders of his constituency. I am sure that there will be hundreds of thousands of people who visit the Devonshire and Cornish and other coasts who will be grateful that, at long last, we are to make an effort to rid the beaches of what has become a real menace.
It is almost pathetic to sit on these beaches around our coasts in the summer months and see mothers trying to cleanse their children, to wash their feet and legs, after they have been in the water or walked along the sands, and to see many people trying to remove filthy oil stains from clothing. It is usually light summer clothing which picks up the oil which gathers on rocks and in places where one would least expect to find it. I therefore believe that all our people will appreciate

the efforts which are now to be made to rid us of this menace at our seaside resorts.
I do not have the technical knowledge to follow the hon. Member for Cornwall, North. I understand that he is rather an expert on this subject, and I suppose that that is why he concentrated most of his observations on the technical aspects. The only observation I have about that is to wonder whether, if there were not so much profit in petrol and oil as such, the oil companies might spend a little more on research into this problem. I do not know. I believe that they make substantial profits without having to consider possible uses of the residues.
I want to ask the Minister three questions. The first concerns Clause 6. I noted that previous speakers in the debate have emphasised that we must operate the provisions of the Bill with vigour and with determination. In Clause 6 we find that the only provision for offences which may be committed is a fine. It is true that the Clause provides for a fairly substantial maximum fine, not exceeding £1,000. But what happens if there are further convictions? Has the Minister considered the possibility of imposing other penalties on shipping firms whose servants commit more than one offence? Normally, one would not expect the fine simply to be increased. But is it to be a fine which is not to be more than £1,000, irrespective of the number of offences that might have been committed?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The £1,000, as I tried to explain in my speech, is the limit for convictions on summary conviction. If the hon. Member will read the Clause, he will see that it provides that where the trial is on indictment there is no limit to the amount of fine.

Mr. Wilkins: I thank the Minister for that explanation. I expected that he would not have overlooked a point of that kind.
Clause 8 gives power to local authorities who are also harbour authorities to provide facilities to enable vessels to discharge their oil deposits while in harbour. Surely this will be a rather expensive proposition. I represent the City of Bristol, where the local authority is a harbour authority. We have had two wonderful years, with a lot of shipping


in the port. We have oil tanks there and I imagine that we shall be very interested in providing adequate facilities for these vessels. But I am not so sure that it will be popular if it means that the ratepayers are to have to make a substantial contribution towards the provision of these facilities.
I notice that the Clause provides for the harbour authorities to recover certain dues. I do not know whether the Minister has in mind that they should make such provision as fully to reimburse them for any expenditure upon which they might have embarked for these facilities. The thought has occurred to me—I will not even suggest that it is practical—that it might be possible to dispose of the thicker oil deposits—

Mr. Geoffrey Wilson: If the hon. Member will study the last paragraph of the financial provisions set out in the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum, he will see that that point is covered.

Mr. Wilkins: I did observe that there are such provisions.

Mr. Wilson: The passage to which I am referring is the last paragraph. It says:
In the case of harbour authorities which are local authorities whose expenses are borne on the rates, expenditure incurred under Clause 8 may involve an additional charge on the rates, with a possible consequential increase in Exchequer Equalisation Grants. Under Clause 8, however, harbour authorities are entitled to make charges for the use of facilities provided by them under the clause, and it is expected that in most cases their expenditure under the clause will be met by means of those charges.

Mr. Wilkins: I am sorry that I had not noted that. That is the point I am trying to make.
I wanted to ask the Minister whether local authorities will be put to any loss whatsoever, or whether it is considered that they will recover, either by dues or by Exchequer equalisation grants, money which they expend to provide these facilities.
I was about to say that where it is not possible to treat the deposits scientifically—I am thinking of very solid oily substances that are discharged—I wonder whether it would not be possible to dispose of them by means of containers. I am thinking particularly of South Wales. Many South Wales ports are near

disused mines or quarries. I wonder whether, in South Wales, it would be a practical proposition to dispose of this kind of deposit in disused mines. Would it be convenient and practical to do so? I put that possibility as a suggestion for disposing of some of these oil deposits.
I will conclude, because I am most anxious to hear the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale (Mr. Erroll) tell us all about the difficulties of his seaside resort. I refer briefly to the Clause which exempts the Royal Navy from the provisions of this Measure. As far back as 1916 the battleships and cruisers in the Royal Navy were, for the most part, oil-driven. I assume that the Navy has intensified the use of oil, if it has not progressed even further than that. I have seen various kinds of oil which these vessels use and some of which they discharge. It varies in consistency. Sometimes it is as thick as mud and at others it is almost like water.
However, why should the Royal Navy be exempted? I do not understand, unless it is that the Navy has made research into oil pollution and discovered scientific means by which to treat and dispose of the residue. If that be so, it might be wise for the knowledge which the Navy might have acquired to be made available to the Merchant Navy, which has a similar problem.

5.20 p.m.

Dr. Reginald Bennett: The hon. Member for Bristol, South (Mr. Wilkins) raised the point about alternative penalties for infraction of the provisions of the Bill. I think that it is fair to say that it would not be desirable to substitute gaol sentences for fines, as might have been in his mind, because we do not want to do anything which will encourage the putting into gaol of either our sea captains in foreign countries or foreign sea captains in this country, when in fact it is the owner of the ship—presumably a company which cannot be gaoled—which is to be held responsible for the mess which may be made.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cornwall, North (Sir H. Roper) raised the question of the disposal of residues. He said that this was uneconomic and worthless stuff, but in that he is at variance with


paragraph 83 of the Faulkner Report, which says:
We understand that at least five refineries are already prepared to receive shipments of tank washings, oil and water mixtures and emulsions, and other waste oils, and some are doing so at present. In order to provide an indication of the commercial possibilities of such arrangements one of the oil companies arranged an experimental coastwise shipment of 850 tons of tank washings (which had been largely dehydrated) from a repair port to a refinery. After treatment of the washings at the refinery the oil company found it possible to pay the suppliers a substantial sum.
Therefore, it seems that there is some hope that the disposal—

Sir H. Roper: I intended to make it clear that this company buys its sludge from the others. It pays for it, to that extent, but there is no large sum of money to be made out of it.

Dr. Bennett: There is no large sum of money, but it seems perhaps that the disposal may be economically worth while and not an unmitigated charge on those who want to get rid of these products.
I represent the constituency which probably has most reason to be grateful for the introduction of this legislation, the constituency which probably in recent times has seen the biggest change from not being fouled to being fouled. Therefore, I have special interest on behalf of my constituents in this fouling of the shores of the leeside of the Solent.
I think that I have shown a fitting interest in this subject. I have initiated Adjournment debates on it in this House, and I have also taken part in such deliberations as we have been able to have in the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee. I am heartily glad at the outcome of all the conferences and committees that have sat in the past, and I give the Bill the most unalloyed welcome.
It would be foolish to underrate the difficulties under which the Bill may operate. The difficulties in the Solent with which I have been concerned have been in waters covered by the existing Act, the 1922 Act. It is almost impossible to succeed in getting a prosecution brought. I have noted that my friend who is captain of one of the naval air stations in my constituency saw from the air a hopper barge discharging oil, and the authorities managed to secure a conviction; but otherwise nobody seems to take the matter up.
I, when sailing for my own amusement in these waters, have often sailed past anchored oil tankers lying off Cowes and seen bubbling away from them streams of dirty oily water. I feel ashamed that I have not instituted proceedings against any of these ships, and I suppose that I must undertake to do so on all occasions in future. However, it will be a big job because there are many tankers dribbling the stuff away, tankers which come in in ballast and which wait to take the products from Fawley. It is the coastal tankers which take the stuff away that are mostly to blame.
Whenever I have sought to raise the subject of oil pollution in this House I have found that I have received a great deal of advice from the oil companies about the iniquities of the shipping people and a great deal of help from the shipping people about the nauseous practices of the oil people. I have thus been supplied with a great deal of knowledge about what each may do.
There was a good deal of self-contradiction in the remarks of Mr. Donald F. Anderson, now, I think, Sir Donald Anderson, at the conference on 27th October, 1953, at which the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) took the chair. He said that the shipping people were welcoming, and doing all in their power to accommodate, the provisions that might be laid down for the disposal of oil residues. He said, at the same time, that
"There is no denying the fact that the Committee's long-term proposals will add to expenditure and may reduce the speed of turn-round—in fact, they will."
In other words, as I see the position, he was acknowledging that the shipping companies do not at the moment do all they might to see that the stuff is properly disposed of.
I should like to say how very happy I am to find the Bill before the House. I wish it a speedy passage, and hope that it may be as enforceable as circumstances can possibly provide for it to be.

5.28 p.m.

Mr. F. J. Erroll: I am especially glad to have the opportunity to congratulate the Minister on introducing the Bill so soon after the Conference and the Convention. Although I cannot claim that my constituency is bounded, in part by the sea—

Mr. Wilkins: The Manchester Ship Canal.

Mr. Erroll: —not even, unfortunately, by the Manchester Ship Canal, oily water though that may be—at least I have the older Bridgewater Canal running through the division, and that is almost as oily as the Ship Canal itself.
I am glad that the International Convention of 1954 is to be followed in such a short space of time by another one, presumably in 1957 or 1958. Then we shall have the Bill on the Statute Book, with two years' experience of its operation, and we may confidently hope that other countries will have approved legislation. The result will be that it will be possible, by the next Convention, to take a further step forward in this important sphere of international co-operation.
I am sure that it is right that the British nation should take the lead in this important international matter; but we must temper our desire for progress with the need to avoid placing British shipping at a disadvantage in a highly competitive market. The shipping industry—and in that category I include the oil companies which own tankers—is to be praised for the manner in which it has gone out of its way to implement the recommendations of the Faulkner Report and to act in advance of legislation. I hope that further advances made will be agreed and acted upon internationally. It must not always be necessary for British shipping to take on the extra burden before anyone else is prepared to do so.
I wish to ask which countries are to follow us in this matter. I understand that 20 countries which were represented at the Conference have signed the Convention. I should like to know whether representatives from Liberia or Panama attended the Conference, and whether those two countries, so important from a shipping registration point of view, are prepared to enforce regulations similar to those contained in this Bill. The Liberian and Panamanian registers account for a large volume of the world's shipping tonnage, particularly tanker tonnage, and many of our good intentions regarding the reduction of oil pollution will be brought to nought if tankers flying the flags of those two countries can disregard regulations which other countries try to enforce.
There is no doubt that this Bill represents a step forward in attempting to legislate outside wholly territorial waters. I am sorry to see that what is colloquially called the "hole" in the North Sea and so picturesquely described by the Minister as that vase-like shape in the North Sea remains outside the limits of the Bill. It is equally disappointing that the area known roughly as the Bay of Biscay area should also be excluded. Although one thinks of that area as being confined to the Bay of Biscay, in fact it extends over a considerably greater distance than the Bay itself. Actually, the limiting point is 48 degrees north and 14 degrees west, whereas the Isle of Ushant is only 4 degrees west, so that there is beyond that an area extending 10 degrees of longitude, which should be a prohibited area.
If one examines a chart it is clear that tankers, coming from the Middle East to the United Kingdom, pass through that area. In view of what has been said by my hon. Friend the Member for Cornwall, North (Sir H. Roper), we are certain that if the vessels are on the British register they will not discharge in that area. But if they are on the Liberian or Panamanian register they may well discharge there, with correspondingly grave effects, not only on the Biscay shore, but also on south-west England and, indeed, as far as the Irish Sea littoral.
I imagine that oily residues on the surface of the sea are largely borne by currents, but there is probably some evidence to show that they may also be wind-borne, particularly in periods when there is a high wind velocity. In areas where there is a prevailing south-west wind blowing towards our shores, considerable amounts of oily deposits may be carried to the coasts of Britain from this Biscay zone.
Clause 10 (1) refers to immediate notification of any discharge in harbour areas. It is understandable that one should wish for immediate notification to be extended to all territorial waters, particularly when the possible danger to bird life is considered. But I hope that the Minister will not be moved to extend the area beyond the harbour areas, because of the comparative uselessness of immediate notification outside harbour areas.
For example, the master of a small coastal tanker proceeding up-channel in dirty weather might find it extremely difficult to make proper notification in time


to a coastal wireless station which might already be congested with urgent messages. Even when such a notification had been made, it is questionable whether anything could be done about it. Oil so discharged would immediately spread in a fine film over a large area, and it would not be possible for it to be trapped or disposed of in any way.
One of the most important considerations about this Bill is the necessity to enact only what can be enforced and what it is desirable to enforce. The Bill appears weakest—as indeed did the otherwise excellent speech of the Minister—on this question of enforcement. I should like to hear a little more about the methods of enforcing the provisions contained in the Measure. It was interesting to learn about the ease with which trails or residues of oil may be detected from an aeroplane, but I should like to know a little more. I wish to know that detection will be followed by prosecutions in proved cases.
While it may not be possible to employ aircraft for this purpose, I think that we might press for the immediate use of that important branch of Customs and Excise, the Water Guard. They have off-shore cutters which are employed in preventive work. It would be well worth while to extend their activities and give them the means and facilities for doing this job. They could then detect the discharge of oil from tankers and from other ships while on the high seas, and bring them to book.
I do not think that we can rely on amateur reporting such as was suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport and Fareham (Dr. Bennett). It would help considerably in the enforcement of the provisions of the Bill, particularly in the Channel area, were it known that Her Majesty's Water Guard were keeping a vigilant eye open for this danger, in addition to the other important duties which they now perform so admirably.
This Measure is important not only to our pleasure beaches. A number of small boat owners, particularly sailing-boat owners, have suffered from oil pollution in the past. Their small craft, often built or painted by themselves during the winter evenings, become covered with a thick oily slime which spoils a great deal

of their summer pleasure. To the extent that this Bill will reduce the filth on the topsides of their craft, I can assure the House that the owners of such craft will be grateful. Indeed, every speech made this afternoon reveals that we are grateful to the Minister for bringing forward this admirable Bill.

5.39 p.m.

Mr. John Taylor: I hope that this is an interim Measure which will precede a comprehensive Bill which will give a lead in the direction of world-wide prohibition. In considering it, we have mentioned our shores, from North Cornwall and the Solent to the wild and stormy shores of Lancashire—although I do not know exactly where the foreshore is there. I think it appropriate to say a word on behalf of Scotland and the Scottish coast. We are, after all, a great maritime country with almost as large a foreshore as England; in fact, including the islands, we have more. We also have a great tradition of ship building, sailing, management and manning.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South (Mr. Wilkins) asked why the Royal Navy should be exempted. It occurred to me, as representing a constituency on the Firth of Forth which is used extensively by the Royal Navy, that we see comparatively little oil pollution on the shores of the Firth of Forth. On the Clyde, however, which is not so much used by the Royal Navy, there has been very considerable oil pollution. The answer to my hon. Friend may be that the Royal Navy uses up its waste and residue oil in an efficient and effective manner.
Oil pollution on the west coast of Scotland has been a very severe problem of great disadvantage to the tourist traffic, quite apart from all the other disadvantages which have been mentioned in this debate. My hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) will remember the great deposits of oil sludge which, a few years ago, were worse than they are today. I am glad to say that the position is improving, though there are still considerable deposits on that foreshore.
As I have said, we must regard this Bill as an interim Measure. It is excellent as far as it goes. It confirms this country's contribution towards the observ-


ance of the decisions arrived at by the International Conference. I hope that soon this great pioneering maritime nation in the use of steam and other propulsion will give a world lead along the lines of complete prohibition of oil deposits from any vessel sailing from our ports.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) has handed me a list of the counties in which birds have been affected by oil pollution, and I see that, so far as Scotland is concerned, the list is a very impressive one. It is far too long, and it goes right round the east coast as well as the west coast, which I thought was most severely affected. It is apparent from the list, which includes Kirkcaldy, Ailsa Craig, West Lothian and East Lothian, that the pollution is so extensive as to affect bird life as much on the east coast as on the west. It would appear from the list that it is even worse on the northeast coast of Scotland than on the busy shipping routes of the Clyde and on the south-west coast.
I hope that this Bill will be the forerunner of a more severe and general one in the future, but, speaking on behalf of my Scottish colleagues and of people on the Scottish coasts, I give it a very cordial welcome.

5.43 p.m.

Sir Roland Robinson: Like every hon. Member who has spoken in this debate, I am a keen and enthusiastic supporter of the Bill and am delighted that the Government have seen fit to take such prompt, and, I hope, effective action. I am especially interested in this matter, because for a great many years I have been privileged to be the President of the Association of Health and Pleasure Resorts of Great Britain.
This body is representative of the local authorities of the whole of the British health resorts, and it is our members who have had this oil waste washed up on their beaches. As President of the Association, I have seen the great volume of protest which has come in from resorts all over the country. I think it fair to say that there is hardly any place around our shores which, at some time or other, has not suffered from the pollution of its waters and beaches due to oil residues.
The position was quite fairly put by the hon. Member for Cornwall, North (Sir H. Roper), because, from all over the

country, we have received complaints that, from time to time, it is absolutely impossible for people to bathe without getting the tarry substance on their feet and bodies, which it is very difficult to get off. They carry it with them to their hotels and boarding-houses, and it gets on carpets and furniture, with the result that everybody, from the visitor to the hotel proprietor and the landlady, has a thoroughly miserable and unhappy time. It is for that reason that we want to mitigate it.
Another point which has been made is that visitors to many of our holiday resorts have seen with horror the miserable plight of the sea-birds round our coasts when they get involved with this oil and sludge which floats on the surface of the sea. My Association, too, has received quite a number of complaints from fishermen who have had both their boats and their gear fouled by this waste oil and from yachtsmen who have suffered similarly.
I believe that in the past few years the menace has been getting worse as a larger number of ships have turned over to the use of oil fuel and as the transport of crude oil for refining in the United Kingdom has increased. The result is that the menace has become so serious that it cannot now be regarded with indifference by anybody. In my opinion, no shipowner has any right whatever to dispose of his waste oil in such a manner as to do damage to his neighbours, whoever or wherever they may be. In this case, a neighbour may be quite a long way from the place where the oil is jettisoned.
I was delighted when my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Colonies, in the days when he was Minister of Transport, responded to this complaint from the Front Bench with a vigour which was really refreshing, and when he announced the setting up of the Faulkner Committee which has, in my opinion, produced a Report which is the classic authority on the subject today. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale (Mr. Enroll) that the shipowners have perfectly voluntarily given a first-class lead, which all of us in the resorts have appreciated very much indeed.
We must not think that this is purely a British complaint, because other


nations, especially the European nations, have complained that their beaches are also being fouled. No doubt their shipowners have been as much, if not more, to blame than ours. However, we have been able to reach this international agreement, and I hope that, when my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary winds up, he will be able to give us some idea when we shall get an adequate number of ratifications of the Convention, so that it may fairly be regarded as being in force.
I should have liked to have seen the Bill go a little further, but I take it that it represents the maximum measure of agreement which could be obtained and enforced at the present time. It is much to the credit of the Government that we have been able to put a ring round this country specifying an area in which oil may not be deposited. I hope, too, that my right hon. Friend will tackle the problem of the "hole" in the North Sea, because it could quite easily be a real menace to the resorts on the East Coast.
It is also sensible that we should provide facilities for the reception of oil waste in the ports and should see that those ships which use their fuel oil tanks for ballast are provided with proper oil separators. There is only one real solution, which is that no persistent oils at all should be discharged anywhere in the sea. In my opinion, it is no use searching for some remote area because, wherever it is dumped, oil travels far and wide and some of it is bound to hit somebody's shore.
I think we are all agreed that the time has not yet come when we can enforce such a prohibition, because we have first to solve the problem of what to do with this oil waste and how we are going to dispose of it on land. I hope that a use can be found for it, and I think that this provides a fair challenge to British science to find an answer.
I understand that we are the first country to bring in legislation to this effect, and we ought to be proud that we have given a lead. We hope that this legislation will be a model for other countries. Once the Measure has become law, I hope that the Government will see that it is rigorously enforced and that there will be prosecutions in proved cases of breach, because it is only in that way that the menace can be checked.
I know that the hon. Member for Preston, South (Mr. Shackleton) was at one time a little worried because he felt that masters of ships would still be tempted to discharge waste oils into the sea, but a study of the penalty Clauses should make it clear that the penalties laid down are adequately severe and will remove much of the temptation to shipmasters. I hope that at the end of the three-year period the Government will call a further conference to see whether we can go the whole hog.

5.51 p.m.

Mr. Geoffrey Wilson: I welcome the Bill as a step towards the solution of a very difficult problem. As was said in the Faulkner Report, complaints with regard to oil pollution can be summarised under five headings—the spoiling of beaches; the destruction of sea birds; the fouling of boats and fishing gear; damage to fish, especially shell fish, and the risk of fire in harbours. The Faulkner Committee dismissed the last risk as being negligible, and I know of no case having occurred, but very serious damage can arise under the other headings. Hon. Members have mentioned the spoiling of beaches, especially those of North Cornwall, but even now not many people realise quite what a serious economic problem this can be to areas dependent upon tourist traffic.
My division joins that of my hon. Friend the Member for Cornwall, North (Sir H. Roper). It has not such a long coastline in North Cornwall, but it also has some of the south Cornish coast. Cornwall receives £9 million a year from tourists in the summer. That is a very substantial contribution to the economics of the county, and anything which dissuades tourists from going to seaside areas, or persuades them to go further afield, would be a very bad thing for our seaside resorts, and for that reason, if for no other, all hon. Members who represent seaside constituencies will welcome the Bill.
It is mostly deep-sea birds which are dsetroyed by oil pollution. Puffins, razorbills, guillemots and birds of that type have their feathers clogged with oil while swimming and can neither swim nor fly. I do not know whether any research has been carried out in connection with the effects which these birds have upon sea life, but if one takes an analogy from


what happened upon land one would suppose that the destruction of any species would upset the balance of nature and might have serious consequences. It has been found several times that if a land species is wiped out the balance of nature is upset and something unpleasant happens as a consequence.
It is not necessary to say much about the very serious consequences of fouling boats and fishing gear. Our fishermen, especially the longshore men and the inshore fishermen, have experienced great difficulty in connection with the expense of their gear in recent years and if, in addition, their gear is clogged with oil, it will be a very serious matter for them.
I welcome the fact that the Bill, unlike the Act of 1922, is not limited to territorial waters but steps into a wider area, and I hope that the view expressed by the Minister—that other countries will follow our example, and follow it soon—will be correct. I was interested in the point made by several speakers that there will be no real solution to this problem until the tipping of oil sludge into the sea is altogether prohibited. It is only to be expected that such oil is bound to come ashore somewhere, sooner or later, wherever it is dumped.
I am glad that the Bill contains provisions for separators being fitted in ships, and the disposal of sludge on shore. Several speakers have mentioned the possibility of finding a commercial use for such sludge. Most have assumed that it would be used as an oil, but I am wondering whether some other use might be made of the heavier materials. A builder who lives on the north coast of Cornwall suggested to me that some of the heaviest material might be used for building, as a kind of asphalt. I do not know whether that is a practical proposition, but I hope that more research will be carried out into the uses of sludge because, if a commercial use can be discovered for it, so that shipowners would be induced to save it for sale ashore and not discharge it into the sea, an ideal solution will have been found for this very difficult problem. I am sure that we all welcome the Bill as a step in the right direction.

5.57 p.m.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: I join with hon. Members opposite who have given a welcome to the Bill. I was surprised to learn that Cornwall receives

as much as £9 million from its tourist traffic. I do not understand why so many people go to the tepid climate of Cornwall when the bracing climate of the west coast of Scotland, especially the Firth of Clyde, is open to them as an alternative. Further, there are no really big islands near Cornwall. I hope that some of this £9 million will be transferred to a healthier part of Britain. I believe that we have sufficient tourist traffic to give prosperity both to the Firth of Clyde and Cornwall.
My hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. J. Taylor) suggested that this problem was not so acute upon the west coast of Scotland, but it is. Right down the coast, from Largs to Ballantrae, complaints have been made about the pollution of the beaches. Upon that stretch of the Ayrshire coast there are many little resorts which are greatly patronised by the working class people of Glasgow during the period of the Glasgow Fair. At that time last year many complaints were made about sludge from oil, from such places as Saltcoats, Ayr, Maidens, Girvan and Ballantrae. Anything which helps to mitigate this nuisance will be welcomed, because it affects the seaside resorts in my constituency and in other parts of Ayrshire.
I remember watching some sea birds beneath the pier at Brodick, in the Isle of Arran. There were about a dozen seagulls and other sea birds which, because they were polluted with oil, were quite unable to get from underneath the pier. That pollution was largely due to the Navy, and I should like an assurance from the Minister that, in this respect, the Navy will be dealt with in exactly the same way as merchant shipping.
What is the objection to the Navy being included in the Bill? If any part of the Fleet discharges oil and commits a nuisance I believe that the admiral in charge should be as liable to prosecution as will be the captain of a trawler. Perhaps we can be told why the Navy does not come within the provisions of this Bill and is, indeed, especially excluded by this Clause, because I can assure the Minister that—especially during the war—the Navy has been one of the chief offenders.
A very large number of places off the coast and the Firth of Clyde, especially Ailsa Craig, are tenanted by sea birds,


and I have heard of oil pollution affecting the bird life there. I am very glad that Her Majesty's Government have shown consideration for wild bird life for the second time recently. Last week the Secretary of State for Air announced that shell duck would not be molested during bombing operations and now we are to deal with cruelty to seagulls and other sea birds. I hope that this will be carried to its logical conclusion and that the humane treatment of sea birds will soon be followed by legislation to put human beings on the same level as birds and so prevent any danger to them.

6.2 p.m.

Mr. G. R. Howard: I should like to join with other hon. Members in welcoming this Bill and, if I may, to congratulate the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Mr. Hayman) who, I understand, is to wind up the debate for the Opposition. We all know what an interest he has taken in this subject.
The hon. Member for Bristol, South (Mr. Wilkins) who has, I think, spent some of his holidays in my constituency, will know only too well what a nuisance oil pollution is to the coastal areas of Cornwall. We should congratulate our own ship owners for the steps they have taken and for the lead they have given, but in this—if foreign ships are allowed to discharge into the "hole" in the North Sea while ours are not—it will be most unfair to our ship owners.
I must declare an interest in oil separation. I am concerned with a company which re-refines used oil. New uses are being found for this apparent waste. One, which is now the subject of scientific research, is of a revolutionary character and if it is successful I think that the problem will not be nearly so bad as hitherto.
Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary will tell us what, under the Bill, will be the situation with regard to a wreck. I have in mind a wreck which occurred recently in the Isles of Scilly, causing a grave nuisance from oil pollution. In the ordinary course of events a ship goes ashore on the rocks in a storm and nothing can be done, but in this case the wreck went ashore in calm weather. It might be argued that a vessel could have been brought alongside the wreck and the oil pumped out instead of being deposited

in the sea. Is it possible at this stage to be told whether this kind of situation is covered by the Bill?
Turning to penalties and to aircraft detection, the Ministry knows that I gave details of a flagrant example of oil pumping off Land's End which was reported by an aircraft. Again, when I went out in the Trinity House relief vessel to the Wolf Lighthouse we crossed the track of a ship which was leaving a great streak of oil more than a mile long. That was within a few miles of Land's End, near the Runnelstone Buoy. Something must be done about such actions. The more publicity the Government can give to the fact that aircraft are reporting these instances, the more publicity that can be given to any cases where such reports by aircraft have been taken up and fines imposed, the more chance we have of stopping this pollution.
As I said at the beginning, our ship owners are playing their part and co-operating. It is only fair to them that ship owners of other nations who commit this nuisance should be vigorously prosecuted. I hope that the Government will assure us that that will be done.

6.6 p.m.

Mr. F. H. Hayman: I should, at the outset, declare my interest in several aspects. First, in reply to my hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes), I am a Cornishman, representing a Cornish constituency and living in my constituency. I consider that no part of the British Isles equals the Cornish coast and county in any way. Secondly, I have been a member of the Cornish Birdwatching and Preservation Society for the last 25 years. Thirdly, although perhaps I am still not a very good swimmer, one of my chief recreations is swimming.
Fourthly, I got my first introduction to oil on the sea by total immersion when swimming as a lad near a wreck. I came out covered from head to toe in oil. Fifthy, Falmouth is a very important tanker port and the company which owns and operates the Falmouth docks has for many years provided facilities for the treatment of oil waste and sludge. I understand that that is done on a profitable basis.
The problem has become more acute as the cargoes of crude oil brought to this


country have increased. In recent years, and particularly since the war, there has been a vast increase in world tanker tonnage. There is no doubt that of late public opinion has been very thoroughly aroused and I am very glad that the Government, in response to that public opinion, have now taken the initiative.
I have no wish to stress further the aspect of the sufferings of sea birds which become polluted with oil, but it really is a terrible sight. Anybody who has stood on the north cliffs of our Cornish coast in the early summer and seen the razorbills and guillemots flying straight out from their nests on the cliff cannot help but feel dreadfully upset to know that many of them will plunge into oil and take perhaps days to die.
Speaking of bird societies and the rousing of public opinion, I should like to pay tribute to Miss Barclay-Smith the very energetic and capable Secretary of the International Co-ordinating Committee. With my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan), Miss Barclay-Smith has been the driving force which has co-ordinated public opinion, resulting in the unofficial international conference held in London in October, 1953.
Paragraph 13 of the Faulkner Report refers to yachts, fishing boats and other gear which have been fouled by oil. The hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale (Mr. Erroll) mentioned that matter just now. Obviously, the local authorities are extremely interested in this problem because we have such a vast coastline around this country, and even in my own county of Cornwall there are over 250 miles of coastline.
As so many hon. Members have stressed, there has been great damage to hotel carpets, bedding and furniture resulting from visitors entering the hotels from the beaches with oil on their shoes and clothing. The hon. Member for Blackpool, South (Sir R. Robinson) mentioned that point, and I was very glad to hear him say that this nuisance applied to resorts all over the country, for I now have no inhibition in referring to the difficulties with which hoteliers in Cornwall have to deal.
In recent years, as one of the advantages of the Welfare State, millions of workers have had increased leisure time,

and, with paid holidays, have been able to spend a week or two at the seaside in a way that was never possible when I was young, when we were very thankful if we spent a day at the seaside in a whole year. Now millions use our beaches, but a necessary part of one's bathing equipment today is a penknife. I have not bathed once in recent years without having to scrape oil off my feet.
This oil can be seen strewn over the beach like a lot of small pellets of coal or, as I have seen on the Perranporth beach in the constituency of the hon. Member for Truro (Mr. G. Wilson), almost like small boulders, where the oil has congealed with the sand to make these great lumps. It hangs around the seaweed and rocks, and it becomes difficult to know what to do about it.
The hon. Member for Cornwall, North (Sir H. Roper) stated that last year the beaches were not so foul as in previous years. All I can say is that when I went on a beach not far from my home a few weeks ago I had to scrape oil from both my boots, although I could not see any oil on the beach itself.
The problem is not only a local problem. It is not only national. It is an international difficulty, as so many speakers have emphasised today. That is evidenced by the unofficial international conference held in London in October, 1953, to which I have already referred. That unofficial conference led to the official international conference in 1954, and that official conference produced the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution of the Sea by Oil in May, 1954. That Convention, in its turn, led to this Bill. I echo what has already been said, that we are grateful to the Minister for introducing this Bill so soon after the Convention.
Reference has been made, particularly by the hon. Member for Gosport and Fareham (Dr. Bennett), to fouling of the sea in that part of the English Channel. Two years ago I wrote to the then Minister of Transport and gave him evidence of two tankers which had discharged oil sludge near the Isle of Wight. I was able to quote the actual letter of a young man on a British tanker who saw the occurrences. I received a reply from the Ministry saying that there is
… no power to take legal action in cases of this kind unless it can be proved that


oil has been discharged within the territorial waters of this country.
That was in December, 1952. I presume that the same rule applies today, that nothing can be done even now where the discharge takes place outside British territorial waters.
Many of the rural district councils have long coastlines but slender financial resources, so that they are unable to do much about this nuisance. Some of them rely upon voluntary labour to keep the small beaches cleared, but that is a difficult proposition and it can only be done if there are enthusiastic volunteers and if the beach is reasonably small. The truth is that the local councils are frightened at the cost of clearing the beaches. Obviously, some Government help is needed. I should like the Minister to tell us what are the responsibilities of local authorities in clearing oil from the beaches, and whether he will appoint a committee to investigate the problem.
It has been said by the hon. Member for Cornwall, North that there was less fouling of the beaches last year than in previous years, and he attributed this fact to the increased vigilance of the shipping companies. That may be true, but I think it is also due to the volume of public opinion which has been roused in this country, particularly in Cornwall, with which the hon. Gentleman himself has been associated in recent years. I hope that this summer we shall get better weather and be able to spend more time on the beaches, but I also hope that the improvement in this condition will continue.
The Bill deals with oil in navigable waters. I wish it could have been drawn a little wider to deal with other forms of pollution of the sea, because there is a new form of pollution and there may come a time when something will have to be done about it. I refer to atomic waste. In replying to a Question of mine some time ago, the Minister of Works said that waste had been dropped 1,000 miles out in the Atlantic into water about two miles deep and that it was in safe containers. But this is what a newspaper said on 28th February:
Atom waste drum crashes in ship.
A thousand miles out in the Atlantic the crew of the "Fort Rosalie" was dumping lethal radioactive waste into a mile-and-a-half deep ocean abyss. Then one of the heavy steel

and concrete containers crashed from a derrick into the ship's hold and was damaged.
It seems to me that full precautions ought to have been taken before this waste was loaded on the ship, to ensure that the containers were of manageable size so that they could be dealt with without risk of accident and disposed of in the normal course of time, which, I believe, is a great many years. Who can tell what damage may have occurred to this container when it fell in the ship? We do not want to panic, but we are entitled to an assurance that more care will be taken in future to see that containers can be properly handled, and that they are of reasonable size and construction so that they can be dropped overboard undamaged.
There was a second deposit of atomic waste in the Hurd Deep. It was said to be
mildly radio-active waste, mainly sludge from the effluent treatment plant at Harwell and equipment used in laboratories.
I know very little about the sea, but I understand that the Hurd Deep is a narrow depression about 70 miles long lying north and north-west of the Channel Islands and at its nearest point to them only five miles distant from the outlying rocks. It has an extreme depth of 94 fathoms. Does the set of the current lie towards the English south-east coast? Presumably it would not be towards the Channel Islands or waste would not be dropped so close. Is it not possible for the Government to arrange for this type of waste to be dropped further out to sea? The accident referred to raises other doubts, such as possible damage to fisheries.
The 1954 Convention comes into operation when ratified by ten countries, of which five must have at least half-a-million tons of tanker shipping. Has that condition been fulfilled? My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East, deplored the non-adherence of both the United States and Panama and the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale referred to Liberia. I should be grateful if the Minister could tell us whether he has had any contact with those countries about adhering to the Convention, and whether a sufficient number of countries with the qualifying tonnage have adhered.
Many hon. Members have referred to the reception "sump" in the middle of


the North Sea, 50 miles from the Norwegian coast. Will British ships be forbidden to use this loophole? I feel that in his opening speech the Minister did not make this sufficiently clear. After all, the North Sea is a small sea, flanked by the coasts of countries which are mostly very heavily populated, and it has important fishing grounds. On the coasts there are important bird sanctuaries, and there are many bird migration routes over the North Sea. Can the Minister take action under Clause 3 (5, a) to make this area a prohibited zone for British tankers? In his speech, I think, he used the word "may."
Paragraph 52 of the Faulkner Report reads:
… we see no alternative but to recommend that the whole of the North Sea should be included in a prohibited area for discharge of the persistent oils.
Reference has also been made to the Bay of Biscay and I believe that a serious attempt should be made to see that the Bay of Biscay is brought within a prohibited area, at least for our shipping.
Clause 1 (3) makes provision for making regulations to cover exceptions from subsection (1) of the Clause. Could the Parliamentary Secretary give some further explanation of that subsection? Clause 6 refers to penalties and has been mentioned often during the debate. I should have liked to see a term of imprisonment added to the maximum fine of £1,000 on conviction in a court of summary jurisdiction, but I appreciate the argument that the Bill, when it becomes an Act—and we hope that will be soon—will be an example to other countries all over the world and might then expose our ship masters to the possibility of terms of imprisonment in foreign prisons, which might not be nearly as good as ours. I agree that that is a risk which we ought not to take.
From what the Minister said today I gather that if there is a prosecution on indictment the amount of the fine would be unlimited. I hope that that is so. Clause 13 (2) says that the expenses in clearing the oil may be paid out of the fine. I do not like that provision very much. Perhaps there are special reasons for it, but I wonder whether a provision could not be introduced whereby such expenses could be additional to the fine. Statutory Instruments under Clause 19 (2) are subject to the annulment procedure.

I wonder whether we ought not to make them subject to the affirmative procedure.
The House and the country are deeply indebted to the Faulkner Committee, which submitted such a valuable and timely Report. I feel sure that we should not be debating the Bill today had it not been for that Report. The Report stimulated those who called for the unofficial international conference, and that conference stimulated the Minister of Transport to convene the official international conference which produced a Convention and then the Bill. But the pollution is persistent, and, when all is said and done, there will be a time-lag before the Bill can become operative, and I hope that the hoteliers and others in the country who go to the sea and enjoy the beaches will not expect that everything will be put right this summer, because the oil is almost indestructible.
Clause 24 reads:
This Act shall come into operation on such day as the Minister may by order appoint; and different days may be appointed for the purposes of different provisions of this Act.
Could the Parliamentary Secretary indicate what will be the most optimistic time table for the operation of that Clause?
As my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East and others have indicated, we on this side of the House give a sincere and warm welcome to the Bill, but obviously we must reserve the right to table suitable Amendments in Committee. The Bill should help to restore our coastline and our seas to a more natural state and to make holidays happier for millions. We have a marvellous heritage in our coasts and beaches and I hope that we shall do everything we can to hand it on to future generations better than we find it now.

6.29 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation (Mr. Hugh Molson): It seldom falls to the lot of a Minister to introduce a Bill which meets with unanimous approval. I have listened to every speech except one, and I have not heard a dissentient voice today. The only criticism that has been made is that the Bill does not go so far as hon. Members would wish. That, the House will remember, is what my right hon. Friend said about his own attitude towards it.
The Bill is drafted in this way to give effect to a Convention on which the delegation of Her Majesty's Government felt it was essential to secure international agreement. All hon. Members who have spoken today have agreed on the importance of that. The fact that this Bill does not go further than it does is the price that had to be paid for international agreement. At the same time, as my right hon. Friend explained in his introductory speech, the Bill is so drafted that it enables the Minister to give effect to a subsequent international Convention, if that is concluded, and enables him also to take steps which are not included within the Convention in order to diminish the amount of pollution of the sea.
This happily concordant debate which has taken place today was introduced by a speech from the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan), for which I should like to thank him. He has played a great and pioneering part in arousing public opinion in this country and elsewhere to the vital importance of dealing with this abuse. His speech was at the same time generous and appreciative of what has been done, and any criticism he made he always kept within what was reasonable and what was likely to be constructive. I shall try to answer some of the questions that were asked by him and by other hon. Members.
I was grateful to the hon. Member for the tribute he paid to the distinguished civil servant in the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation who was the chairman of the official Committee. I do not think the hon. Member went too far when he said that the Report of that Committee was a pioneering report and remains without rival in the authority with which it deals with this subject. It was the foundation upon which the international conference worked, it was the basis of the agreement that was reached—although, unfortunately, the agreement did not go so far as the Report has gone—and, therefore, it is the foundation stone upon which this Bill is constructed.
It has been decided that there shall be a national committee to continue to deal with this matter. I am happy to say that it will be under the chairmanship of Mr. Faulkner. It will contain representatives

of the General Council of British Shipping. That is one more proof of the truth of what was said by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Barkston Ash (Sir L. Ropner) when he pledged British shipowners to continued co-operation in this work. It also will contain representatives of the dock and harbour authorities, at whose request one of the new Clauses has been incorporated in the Bill. It will contain representatives of the oil companies, the Shipbuilding Conference, the ship repairers and dry dock owners, Lloyd's Register of Shipping and of a number of Government Departments, including the Ministry of Transport, Civil Aviation, the Ministry of Fuel and Power, the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, the Admiralty and—last but by no means least important—the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research.

Mr. Callaghan: That will be a very comprehensive body, but the Parliamentary Secretary will remember that I spoke of the importance of the attitude of the trade unions. The Navigators and Engineering Officers Union has played quite a part already. I think I am right in saying that it was represented at the international conference by Captain Tennant. Would the hon. Gentleman agree to consider whether it would be useful to have on this committee the officers and men who will have to apply the Act?

Mr. Molson: At a later stage in my remarks I was going to say with what satisfaction I heard of the unanimous resolution passed by the Navigators and Engineering Officers Union. I am most grateful to the hon. Member for his suggestion. My right hon. Friend has asked me to say that he will give that matter his consideration.
The hon. Member asked about the attitude of the British oil companies. They have publicly undertaken to provide reception facilities at their own terminals in the United Kingdom and overseas. Unfortunately, large, rich and powerful as the British oil companies are, they do not own or control a very great many of the overseas terminals. Although facilities have already been provided at the main oil terminals in the United Kingdom and some progress is being made at the British oil companies' terminals abroad—for example, in the new refineries at Aden and Freemantle—it unfortunately remains


the case that there are a great many terminals which do not exercise the same degree of interest, and progress has not been so great there. However, we hope that the example which has been set will be followed. The matter is being pressed at present by the British National Oil Pollution Committee, on which the oil companies are represented.
The hon. Member also asked about what was done with the oily residues from ships. The hon. Member for Preston, South (Mr. Shackleton) and my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport and Fareham (Dr. Bennett) also dealt with that question. The official Committee has been in touch with the refineries and most of them are prepared to take delivery of the residues when they have been to some extent, dehydrated. As was mentioned in the course of a quotation from the Faulkner Report, as a result of work that has been done, fortunately, it has been found that a number of these residues, which are so noxious at sea, can be refined and can have some commercial value after they have been refined. We are satisfied that there are no insuperable obstacles to making commercial use of them, provided, of course, that they are available in sufficiently large quantities.
It might be convenient if I now say something about the interesting and important matters raised by the hon. Member for Preston, South. Drawing, I think, upon his old experiences as a seafaring man, and also on a study he has made of the subject, he was afraid that there would be very great technical difficulties in separating oil from sea water. He said that in many cases an emulsion is formed which is very obstinate to treatment by separators. I hope that we shall be able to follow this matter out in greater detail in the Committee stage. I certainly would not in any way lightly contradict what the hon. Member said, but fortunately the advice I have received does not entirely confirm what he said about those difficulties.
While it is true that an emulsion is on some occasions formed, I understand that that is comparatively rare. In general, oil does come to the top and the separators, which work on the same principle as settling tanks, are reasonably effective. Incidentally, if the hon. Member turns to paragraph 114 of the Faulkner Report, he will find that it says:

It is normally unnecessary to pass all the water from deep tanks used alternately for oil fuel and water ballast through a separator. After settling, the lower part of the water is often substantially oil-free and can with safety be pumped overboard.
We will certainly go carefully into that matter, but the indications at present are that it will not prove to be technically too obstinate a problem.
The hon. Member and my hon. Friend the Member for Cornwall, North (Sir H. Roper) both referred to the tremendous importance of research into this subject. One or other of them asked my right hon. Friend to undertake research upon this subject in the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation. The Government are convinced of the great importance of research, but that is really a matter for the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, which is engaged on it at the present time. The cost of it is met out of the Estimates for that Department. The National Committee, to which I have referred, is in close touch with the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and, indeed, that Department is represented upon the Committee. I give the House a complete and unequivocal assurance that we regard this as being of very great importance and one in which we believe that satisfactory results should be obtained from the work that is now being done.

Mr. Shackleton: I think that the Parliamentary Secretary is himself the Parliamentary Secretary for science matters in this House. I do not know whether he still answers Questions on the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. D.S.I.R. has a number of duties allocated to it and operates through all sorts of bodies by remote control. How exactly is it doing this research?

Mr. Molson: A good deal of the research is being done at present by the Fuel Research Establishment. I would rather that we went into this matter more fully in Committee, because I am not informed upon the exact details of what is being done. I can, however, give that complete assurance.
I have dealt with most of the points raised by the two hon. Members and also by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Barkston Ash. I was grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Corn-


wall, North for this tribute to my right hon. Friend the present Colonial Secretary, which was most agreeable coming after the surprising and gracefully expressed tribute from the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East. I agree with him that we have every hope that further progress will be made at the next conference.
I think that the hon. Member for Bristol, South (Mr. Wilkins) received an answer from my right hon. Friend to the first point that he raised in that the Financial Memorandum, at the beginning of the Bill, points out that
harbour authorities are entitled to make charges for the use of facilities provided by them under the clause, and it is expected that in most cases their expenditure under the clause will be met by means of those charges.
In normal circumstances, we do not think that the ratepayers of Bristol would be called upon to meet the cost of providing these facilities there.
The hon. Member for Bristol, South and also the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) raised the point that ships of the Royal Navy are exempt from the provisions of the Bill. In this we are following the precedent of the 1922 Act. It has been the custom in cases of this kind for rules to be enforced by order of the Lords of the Admiralty rather than by the terms of a Statute.
My hon. Friend the Member for Gosport and Fareham gave some interesting examples of what has happened and what he had seen of discharges being made by ships in contravention of the 1922 Act. It is natural that the beaches in his constituency should have been polluted. Of course much of the purpose of the Bill is to extend the area of the prohibition. We now realise that the scope of the 1922 Act was quite inadequate.
My hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale (Mr. Erroll) and the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Mr. Hayman), who wound up the debate for the Opposition, asked about Liberia and Panama. Liberia has signed the Convention but has not ratified it. Panama has neither signed nor ratified. We will bear in mind the point made by my hon. Friend that although notification of discharge within the waters of harbours, as is now provided for in the Bill, is reasonable and desirable, it should not be extended beyond.
The hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. J. Taylor) advanced an argument—an argument which I had not put forward, but I am sure it is a good one—as to why the Royal Navy need not be incorporated in the Bill. He was of opinion, from his observation in Scotland, that in the Firth of Forth for many years past the Navy had been careful about oil pollution. My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, South (Sir R. Robinson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Truro (Mr. G. Wilson) both spoke eloquently on the difficulties which are created in holiday resorts, the loss which their constituencies have incurred, the discomfort of the visitors and the loss to hotel owners.
My hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. G. R. Howard) referred to the problem of a wreck. I will certainly look into that matter, but as a first impression I am inclined to think that certainly so far as the salvaging of the oil and of the hull of the ship is concerned, it is already provided for in Clause 4 of the Bill, Clause 4 also deals with cases in which it is necessary for oil to have been discharged and which states that
a defence under this subsection shall not have effect if the court is satisfied that the discharge of the oil or mixture was not necessary for the purpose alleged in the defence …
But I am not entirely sure of that, and I will go into the matter carefully before the Committee stage.
The hon. Gentleman the Member for Falmouth and Camborne, in winding up, asked how many countries had adhered. None has adhered as yet. They cannot do so until they pass legislation. This country is setting an example in that way. He asked me whether British ships would be prohibited from discharging oil in the part of the North Sea which we should have liked to have included but which we were unable to persuade foreign countries to include. I repeat what has already been said in another place by the Government. It is the intention to prohibit the discharge of oil from United Kingdom ships within this remaining area of the North Sea, subject, however, to some necessary exceptions to be defined in regulations, such as when a ship is proceeding to a port in the area where there are no adequate facilities for the reception of waste oil. The Bill contains power by which the Minister of Transport is enabled to prohibit the discharge of oil


anywhere at sea if that were agreed by the other maritime countries.
We believe that this legislation is the first and necessary step for any progress to be made. We attach great importance to the existence of the national Committee to which I have referred. It is not a newly created Committee. It is one which has been operating since last July, and has acted, as I have already indicated, in a number of matters, such as research, and so on.
I was asked about the representation of the unions upon it, and I undertook to give consideration to it. That consideration has been a little more rapid than I expected at that time, and Captain Tennant is already a member of the Committee. That, no doubt, will give some comfort and satisfaction to the hon. Gentleman.
I thank the House for the reception it has given to the Bill. We hope to have the Committee consideration soon. We know the Amendments to be put forward will be put forward in a constructive and helpful spirit, and they will be treated in that way by the Government.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Committed to a Standing Committee, pursuant to Standing Order No. 38 (Committal of Bills).

Orders of the Day — OIL IN NAVIGABLE WATERS [MONEY]

Considered in Committee under Standing Order No. 84 (Money Committees)—[Queen's Recommendation signified.]

[Sir Charles MacAndrew in the Chair]

Resolved,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to enable effect to be given to the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution of the Sea by Oil, 1954, and otherwise to make new provision for preventing the pollution of navigable waters by oil, it is expedient to authorise—

(1) the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of—

(a) any administrative expenses of the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation under the said Act, and
(b) any increase, attributable to provisions of the said Act relating to facilities in harbours for the disposal of oil residues, in the sums payable out of such moneys

under Part I of the Local Government Act, 1948, or under the Local Government
(Financial Provisions) (Scotland) Act, 1954;
(2) the payment into the Exchequer of any fees received by the said Minister under the said Act.—[Mr. Boyd-Carpenter.]

Resolution to be reported Tomorrow.

ARMY BILL

As amended, considered.

Clause 1.—(RECRUITING OFFICERS.)

Amendment made: In page 1, line 16, leave out "in places".—[Mr. F. Maclean.]

Clause 18.—(Validity of attestation AND ENLISTMENT.)

6.55 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for War (Mr. Fitzroy Maclean): I beg to move, in page 14, line 37, to leave out "(4)" and insert "(3)".

This Amendment is to correct an error.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause 53.—(Irregular arrest and CONFINEMENT.)

Mr. F. Maclean: I beg to move, in page 29, line 15, to leave out "in writing".
This and the next Amendment are to bring subsection (3) into line with the previous subsection, where there is mention of a report in writing, and to substitute "a written statement containing" for the words "in writing".

Amendment agreed to.

Further Amendment made: In page 29, line 17, at beginning, insert "a written statement containing".—[Mr. F Maclean.]

Clause 75.—(Provisions for avoiding delay after arrest.)

Mr. E. G. Willis: I beg to move, in page 39, line 9, at the end, to insert:
and in no case shall a person be held in custody awaiting trial for a period longer than one month.
The Amendment is to place some limit upon the time for which a prisoner can be held in custody awaiting trial. Last month, as the hon. Gentleman knows, there was a case in Edinburgh concerning a gunner who lives on the borders of my constituency. It came as a shock to a


great many people when they read about it. In that case the person concerned was held in custody awaiting trial for five months, a period which turned out to be longer than the sentence which he ultimately received.
During his detention he tried to commit suicide when another soldier with whom he was confined was sent for trial. Even then, apparently, no great haste was made to bring on the trial. The condition of the man was very severely commented upon by the defending officer at the trial. He pointed out that the man had probably suffered permanent harm to his mind, and that
his nervous and mental condition are now in such a state that there is considerable doubt as to his mental fitness to undergo further confinement.
7.0 p.m.
The Minister, of course, has this case under consideration, and I am grateful to him for treating it in that way. I hope that later we shall have a report, and that steps will be taken to deal with the people who delayed the trial, particularly in view of the circumstances attaching to it. It appears, however, that this kind of thing is still possible under the Clause to which the Amendment applies.
I appreciate that it takes some time to prepare evidence for a trial. Witnesses have to be seen and evidence obtained, and it is frequently in the interest of the prisoner that there should be a period of remand whilst that is being done, but there can be abuse of that, as we saw in this case. It is for that reason that I am moving the Amendment.
I appreciate that the Government may not be able to accept the proposed period of one month, but we would like to have from the Government some indication of what steps they are thinking of taking to prevent a recurrence of cases of the kind to which I have referred. It seems to me that that can be done by an Amendment to the Clause. If the Minister can give an assurance that something will be done before the Bill goes to another place, we may be quite content, but we certainly would have an assurance that cases of this kind will not be allowed to occur again in the Army.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: I hope that the Minister will accept the Amendment. A good deal of comment

was caused when it was reported in the Scottish Press that a soldier had been detained in a guardroom for five months under close arrest. I should like to know why the prisoner in this case was not under open arrest. I remember that when I was once kept waiting for trial I was placed under open arrest. I was allowed to walk about the place, and I did not try to get away.
Here is a scandal of a prisoner being kept in the guardroom for five months. That is worse treatment than is given to an ordinary civilian prisoner arrested on a serious charge. The civilian prisoner who has to await trial for any considerable time is taken to a good, healthy, comfortable gaol, but some of these guardrooms are hopelessly insanitary places, and the regulations which obtain in a civilian prison do not apply to them.
I cannot see why the Minister should not be able to accept the Amendment. It may be said that in the case which my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis) has mentioned a very long time was needed to prosecute inquiries, but surely five months are a long time in which to carry out investigations into an alleged crime and to collect the evidence. This may seem only a small matter, but it came to light that this kind of thing could go on in the Army only when the man tried to commit suicide.
If this deplorable incident had not happened, his injustice would have continued without attention being drawn to it. I wonder how many cases there have been in the Army in recent times where the prosecuting authorities have kept a man under arrest day after day, week after week or, as in this case, month after month. Now that we know that this state of affairs exists, I submit that this is the time and place to remedy it. I hope that the Minister will accept the Amendment.

Mr. George Wigg: I am quite prepared to believe that there is something very wrong in the recent case where a man was kept under arrest awaiting trial for five months, but I am not sure that the Amendment is the way to tackle the problem. The Amendment says that no person shall be
held in custody awaiting trial for a period longer than one month.
I presume that that means that no person shall be held under arrest.

Mr. Willis: And remanded in custody.

Mr. Wigg: I wonder if the words in the Amendment mean "under arrest," because "arrest" includes open arrest. We want to ensure that if a man is charged the matter shall be investigated with the least possible delay, and that he should not be kept waiting a day longer than is necessary. To detain a man for a month may involve as serious a neglect as might be involved in keeping him for five months.
I would advise my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis) to press the Minister verystrongly for an investigation into the case involving a man being held in custody for five months, but I am not sure that it is right to place a limit of one month, as proposed in the Amendment. It weakens rather than strengthens the position. The Bill says that no undue delay shall take place, and that where a man has been under arrest for more than eight days a special report on the need for further delay must be made. I do not think that the Amendment would improve matters. I certainly think that it would be unwise to base an Amendment to the Bill on a case which has not yet been fully investigated.

Mr. F. Maclean: The hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis) has mentioned the case of his own constituent. As he knows, that is now being investigated. It was an exceptionally complicated case which involved extensive inquiries, of which the hon. Member is aware, and it was also necessary to await the outcome of the trial of another soldier who was involved. That soldier had to be tried first before we could proceed with the charge against this soldier. Nevertheless, there is no doubt at all that the period of 140 days for which the soldier in question was detained is much too long. My right hon. Friend and myself, therefore, have instituted a review of existing arrangements for avoiding delays in cases of this kind.
It might be useful if, first of all, I outlined the arrangements which exist at present. Under the existing law, and under Clause 75 of the Bill, a report has to be rendered by the accused's commanding officer after the accused has been under arrest for eight days. The commanding officer has to report to the competent authority, which in this case is the convening officer of the court-martial, and

to the Director of Army Legal Services or his representative. He has to do that every eight days until a period of 90 days has been reached. When a prisoner has been under close arrest for 90 days, he cannot be kept under arrest any longer unless the convening officer specifically so directs.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: That is three months.

Mr. Maclean: That is three months. On the question whether a man remanded for trial by court-martial should be kept under open or close arrest, Queen's Regulations are very wide on this subject. In fact, they allow a discretion to the commanding officer as to whether a man should be kept under close arrest or not.
We do not feel able to accept the hon. Member's Amendment as he drafted it. The hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) has mentioned one reason why it could hardly be the best way of settling this problem. There are bound to be exceptional cases where rather long investigations are necessary and are bound to last more than one month. That is one reason why it would not be possible to accept this Amendment, but, as I have said, my right hon. Friend feels that the present arrangements are not satisfactory, and, therefore, it is his intention to introduce a new procedure on the following lines with the object of avoiding delays of this kind as far as possible.
First of all, we propose to tighten up the rules under which a man can be kept under close arrest as opposed to open arrest, or no arrest at all. We propose to ensure that a man is only kept under close arrest when that is absolutely necessary. There are cases where there is the danger that a man may do damage to himself or to other people, or may attempt to suborn witnesses and so on, but unless it is necessary a man will not be kept under close arrest at all. When we have time to work it out a little more, the circumstances will be specified under which it is necessary to keep a man under close arrest.
The new procedure for the avoidance of delay will be roughly as follows. When the convening officer receives the first and subsequent eight-day reports which have to be reported by the commanding officer when a man is held for a period


of eight days, we propose to lay down that the convening officer must satisfy himself as to the necessity for the individual's continued detention under close arrest.
When we come to the fourth period of the eight days, which is when he has been in custody for about a month, the convening officer will be required to report to his superior officer, who must be an officer not below the rank of major-general. If the convening officer happens to be a commander-in-chief, as may be the case, then, of course, the case will already be in his mind and this procedure will not be necessary. After the eighth period of eight days, that is, roughly speaking, after two months have elapsed, the case, if it has not been brought before him already, will be brought before the commander-in-chief, and if the commander-in-chief then decides that there is a genuine need to keep the prisoner under close arrest for a further period, he will be required to inform the War Office in order that the matter can be brought to the attention of a member of the Army Council.
We hope by this means that it will be possible to ensure two things. Firstly, that nobody will be kept under close arrest whilst awaiting trial unless it is absolutely necessary, and secondly, that there will be no avoidable delays in bringing a man to trial. I hope that will meet the needs of the hon. Member.

7.15 p.m.

Mr. Wigg: Would the Under-Secretary be kind enough to say what would happen in the case of a man who is held under a mixture of open and close arrest, or is it that he is to be kept under continuous close arrest and then to be cleared? If it is a mixture of the two it might lead to very grave abuse indeed.

Mr. Maclean: As I say, under the present arrangements the eight day report which I mentioned just now applies whether a man is under close or open arrest. The 90 day report, when a convening officer has to give written permission, applies only to a man who is held under close arrest. If he is to be held under close arrest after 90 days have elapsed, then the convening officer must say so in writing.
Our plans have not been worked out in detail yet, but we are certainly bearing in mind the very genuine point put by the hon. Member for Dudley. We are not going to try to keep men under close arrest, because from our point of view it is better to have the men out working than staying under close arrest.

Mr. Arthur Henderson: Can the hon. Gentleman say whether the statement he has just made is confined to the War Office, or is it made on behalf of all three Service Departments?

Mr. Maclean: It is only made on behalf of the War Office, but I think I am right in saying that, subject to anything my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Air may have to say, the Air Ministry procedure is already more in this direction than ours is.

Mr. John Strachey: I do not know how my hon. Friends the Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis) and the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) think about this matter now, but at first hearing the Under-Secretary has suggested something which sounded as though it would take us some of the way which they want to go. I am glad that the Government have recognised that there is a very real problem here, because the House has been a little shocked to hear of this case. We would like some information whether similar, analogous cases are possible, because it looks as if what one might call the analogy under military law to the habeas corpus procedure is not working well at all under present circumstances, and that is something about which the House is very sensitive.
I do not pretend to be able to tell at first hearing exactly how satisfactory are the regulations which the Under-Secretary has put before us, but, as I understand it, there will be a two-months' limit beyond which the case could not go without reference to a member of the Army Council. That seems to me to be a most important provision, but I should have liked that reference to be to the Army Council as such and not to one member of it, so that the civilian members like the Secretary of State or the Under-Secretary might be brought into the case. Then we would get nearer to the House of Com-


mons and we could question them here on the subject.
I am not suggesting that the civilian members would judge a matter like this any better than the military members, but the former are Members of the House of Commons and we can question them here about it. That is a decided advantage. I hope the Secretary of State might bear that also in mind in order to see whether something could not be done on those lines.
Secondly, I should like to know how these new regulations are to be promulgated. Are they simply to be brought in as footnotes to the Queen's Regulations, or are they to be introduced into the Bill in any way? Are the Government thinking of moving Amendments on those lines in another place, or how is this going to be done? If it is going to be done by amendments to the Queen's Regulations, then I think this House would very much like to have a statement from the Minister on the subject at the appropriate time and hear what has been done, because it is something obviously seized on now owing to the excellent initiative of my hon. Friends, something which I am sure the House would not like to let go without following it up so that all of us can see that it is being carried out in an effective way.

Sir Patrick Spens: There is only one point I want to raise on this Amendment, because this matter was considered fully by the Select Committee and this Clause is founded on our consideration of what was in the Lewis Committee Report. What we recommended was continuation of these 8-day reports regularly until a court martial had been assembled or until an offender had been punished. The point with which we were concerned was that they should apply both to a man in close arrest and to a man in open arrest, and the Clause is drafted so as to apply to both.
I am sure that my right hon. Friend is not proposing in any way to diminish the effect of the Clause as drafted. It is merely that in the case of men in close arrest stricter methods will be used to make certain that the appropriate higher authorities know what is going on, and so that at the earliest possible time the prisoner can be properly dealt with.

The Secretary of State for War (Mr. Antony Head): I think we are all on the same side in this matter. Neither the War

Office nor any hon. Member wants to keep men in close arrest. We have been into the analogy of civil practice in this matter where there is the advantage of an individual, often the magistrate, before whom the accused will come at frequent intervals, and who may often intervene and say that the case cannot be postponed.
Where we are concerned, there is a certain diversity. There are the Army Legal Services, the S.I.B. and other authorities. Our aim is to try to institute a procedure to ensure that this kind of thing will not happen. There are often logical reasons why investigation before trial is protracted and why an individual remains under arrest awaiting trial over a long period. This is not the first case in which men have been in close arrest for a long time. In each case into which I have looked, although the reasons for it have been good, they have not been good enough to justify the length of arrest and yet there is no place in that period where one could say to one individual, "It is your fault that something has gone wrong."
Our idea is to limit the period by the fact that the matter must come before a member of the Army Council within a certain time. The right hon. Gentleman asked, why not the Army Council as a whole? I think it will work perfectly well if it comes before a member of the Army Council. The Army Council is most reluctant that any man should be under arrest for that period of time. The reason why this has happened is because of a diffusion of responsibility in which all the individuals concerned have had a perfectly good reason for their actions but, collectively, there is no one to say, "This must stop and there must be a trial." Our aim is to avoid the kind of situation raised by the hon. Gentleman. Nobody wants it.
Before we make the Amendment to Queen's Regulations, I should like to confer with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington, South (Sir P. Spens) as to the exact form it should take. Both the Rules of Procedure and Queen's Regulations will be amended, and I know that he has a lot of knowledge on this point upon which the Lewis Committee reported. It is our intention so to amend Queen's Regulations as to attempt to put a safety catch


on ourselves, as it were, in order to avoid any delay which is avoidable.

Mr. Ede: May I follow up the point raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Strachey)? Could it not be arranged that the member of the Army Council before whom this would go would be the Under-Secretary of State for War, so that there is the advantage of consideration by a person who is in touch with public opinion and can therefore be expected to view it from the point of view that this House would wish it to be viewed?
Secondly, may I suggest that on every fourth occasion—that is after the 32nd and 64th day—the notice should be accompanied by a report from the medical officer as to whether the continued detention of the man in close arrest is having any ill-effect on his physical or mental health.

Mr. Wigg: Would the right hon. Gentleman be good enough, if he does this by amending regulations, to bear closely in mind the earlier point which I made before he came in, that whilst he may stop the hole as far as close arrest is concerned, he may throw open wide the gates in the case of open arrest and a man might be under open arrest for a year?

Mr. Head: That was the point.

Mr. Willis: May I thank the right hon. Gentleman first for the way in which he has dealt with the single case I brought to his attention and, secondly, for the speed with which he has decided to do this, since it is only a month since the trial? In view of that, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 151.—(DEDUCTIONS FROM PAY FOR MAINTENANCE OF WIFE OR CHILD.)

Mr. F. Maclean: I beg to move, in page 86, line 35, to leave out from "power" to end of line and to insert:
to make an order under this section.
This Clause deals with deductions from pay for the maintenance of wives and children. Subsection (5) which the Amendment seeks to amend applies to children over the age of 16, children under that age being dealt with in the

preceding subsection. An order of the Army Council for maintenance deduction in favour of a child over 16 must be capable of being varied or revoked in the same way as an order in favour of a child under 16. The power to vary or revoke is generally expressed in subsection (4), but I am advised that the way in which the first line of subsection (5) is drafted might throw doubt as to whether an order under that subsection could be varied or revoked, so the amended and rather more generally worded subsection will avoid any misunderstanding on that point.

7.30 p.m.

Mr. Michael Stewart: I may not be following this point very skilfully. The subsection reads:
The power under this section to make or vary an order. …
The Amendment deals partly with the arrangement of the means and also leaves out the word "vary." I understood the hon. Gentleman to say that an order of this kind ought to be capable of being varied or revoked. How is it that an Amendment which leaves out the word "vary" from this subsection has the effect which he described? I may not have followed his explanation properly, but it was not clear to me.

Mr. F. Maclean: As redrafted, the subsection reads:
The power to make an order under this section …
and, therefore, in that sense, subsection (4) reads:
The Army Council or an officer authorised by them may by order vary or revoke any order …
As the Clause is drafted, the power under it to make or vary an order—for one thing, it omits the word "revoke"—might be interpreted as meaning that it was not possible to revoke. But when it is necessary to make an order under this Clause it clearly covers both "vary" and "revoke."

Mr. Stewart: I hope that I am not being awkward about this. The hon. Gentleman has just told us that subsection (5), as it now reads, leaves out the word "revoke," and he thought that unsatisfactory. He now proposes not only to leave out "revoke," but "vary" as well. I cannot see how that makes it better, unless the word "make"—

Mr. Wigg: My hon. Friend says that the word "revoke" is to be left out, but I cannot find the word "revoke" in that line at all.

Mr. Maclean: It is in subsection (4).

Mr. Stewart: The point made by the Under-Secretary was that subsection (4) states "vary or revoke." At the moment, the word "revoke" is not in subsection (5). The hon. Gentleman appeared to think that that was one of the things which made subsection (5) unsatisfactory. I am saying that the Amendment not only fails to put that right, but leaves out another word as well, the word "vary." If—and this may be the point which I have missed—the word "make" can be interpreted, and would be interpreted by lawyers, to mean, "make, vary or revoke," then I can see the point of the Amendment. If that is not so, I cannot see that this Amendment makes the position any better or even has the effect suggested by the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Maclean: I think that the sense of it is "to make an order varying or revoking an order."

Mr. A. Henderson: We must get this point cleared up. Subsection (4) gives the Army Council, or an officer authorised by it, power by order to make an order varying or revoking an order. Subsection (5), as amended, merely limits the power to impose a deduction, as provided in paragraphs (a) and (b), to an order which has been made under subsection (4). The Under-Secretary must make clear whether subsection (5), as amended, also gives power to the authority to vary an order in accordance with paragraphs (a) and (b). Is it only the original order which can provide for children under the age of 16, or can the order, after it has been made, vary in accordance with those paragraphs?

Sir P. Spens: I suggest that the Amendment is perfectly in order. In subsection (4) the word "make" does not appear. Subsection (4) merely provides that by order the Army Council may vary or revoke an order. Therefore, an order made under the subsection is an order which may either vary or revoke an order. When we get to subsection (5) we say
The power under this section to make … an order.
By either varying or revoking we can make these deductions.

Mr. Strachey: I am as a child in these matters, but would not the purpose of the Under-Secretary be equally served simply by inserting in subsection (5) the words "or revoke"? I can well believe that I am wrong, but it is very puzzling to a layman to see how the hon. Gentleman's intention—which is surely to include the power to revoke in the case of the list in subsection (5)—is aided by leaving out the word "vary" Why leave out the word "revoke"?

Mr. Maclean: Clause 151 as a whole makes provision for three acts. One is to make an order; the second is to vary an order; the third is to revoke an order. If, as the right hon. Gentleman has suggested, we were simply to insert the word "revoke", it would not meet the purpose. We have to cover all three acts, and that is done more successfully by a comprehensive term like "make an order."
Amendment agreed to.

Clause 220.—(Jurisdiction of courts.)

The Lord Advocate (Mr. W. R. Milligan): I beg to move, in page 121, line 21, to leave out "under this Act" and insert:
to which this section applies.
During the Committee proceedings anxiety was expressed by a number of hon. Members regarding the position of soldiers whose homes were in Scotland. I gave an undertaking, both in connection with the previous Clause dealing with courts-martial and with Clause 220, with which the present Amendment is concerned, that we would examine the matter to see if there was any unfairness, or whether it would be practicable to make any alteration so far as courts-martial were concerned. After anxious consideration, we feel that there is no unfairness to anyone in the existing procedure.
Concerning Clause 220, which deals with the jurisdiction of civil courts, it was suggested during the Committee stage that it was undesirable that an offence committed in Scotland might be prosecuted in an English civil court, and, conversely, that an offence committed in England might be prosecuted in a Scottish civil court. We think there is considerable force in that argument. This Amendment, and the next Amendment, in line 23, are designed to provide that civil offences which are made offences under this Bill shall, if committed


in Scotland, be tried in Scotland and, if committed in England, be tried in England.
We have also taken the opportunity in these Amendments to make it clear that the offences referred to are the particular offences set out in the various Clauses.

Mr. M. Stewart: I think that the whole House will welcome these Amendments.
It seems to me that we are doing two very important things to this Clause. Not only are we ensuring that if an offence is committed in Scotland it shall be tried in Scotland—which will gratify a number of my hon. Friends and also some hon. Members opposite—but, unless I misunderstand it, we are enormously reducing the scope of this Clause by causing it to apply, not to any offence under this Bill, but to any offence to which this Clause applies.
The Clauses in question deal only with a quite limited range of what one might loosely term, though from the public's point of view inaccurately, military offences. The anxiety expressed at an earlier stage by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) that a man who was alleged to have committed a murder in England might be tried for it in Kenya before a resident magistrate without a jury, would now become quite impossible, due to the fact that the scope of the Clause has been limited in this manner. Therefore, it seems to me that the Amendment is one which the whole House can welcome.

Sir P. Spens: May I add my word of welcome to this Amendment on behalf of my absent fellow-countrymen, because I am sure that it goes a very long way towards answering one of their main objections? On the other hand, I have just one point on the Clause as proposed to be amended on which I should like enlightenment by the Lord Advocate. The Clause says:
In the United Kingdom or any colony, a civil court of any description having jurisdiction in the place where an offender is for the time being shall have jurisdiction …
One of the advantages of the Clause as it stands at present is that if a unit is

ordered to a colony and Mere goes with it a man who has committed an offence in England or in Scotland, and the courts of the Colony have the requisite jurisdiction, the man can, in fact, be tried in the Colony and has not to be brought home to be tried.
The effect of this Amendment, as I read it, would be that in future a man who had been sent overseas before it is discovered that he has committed an offence, would have to be sent back to be tried. I think that would be the result of it, but I should like the matter to be considered. If it is, I think that it would be a good result, although it may cause additional expense to the taxpayer.

The Lord Advocate: I am much obliged to the hon. Member for Fulham, East (Mr. M. Stewart) and to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington, South (Sir P. Spens) for their approval of the Clause.
With regard to the first suggestion that the Amendment, if accepted, would largely restrict the Clause, I think, on the contrary, that it would really clarify it. As to the point raised by my right hon. and learned Friend, I should like to consider that. At first blush, I think that his construction is the correct one, and that it would be inevitable that a person would have to be brought home to Scotland or England from wherever he was before he could be tried for an offence to which this Clause applies, if that offence were committed in Scotland or England. I will certainly consider the point, but I think that is the effect of the Amendment.

Amendment agreed to.

Further Amendment made: In page 121, line 23, at end insert:
Provided that such an offence committed in any part of the United Kingdom shall not be triable outside that part of the United Kingdom.
(2) The offences to which this section applies are offences against any of the following sections of this Act, that is to say, section nineteen, section one hundred and sixty-one, section one hundred and seventy-one, and sections one hundred and ninety-one to one hundred and ninety-seven; and references in this section to a part of the United Kingdom are references to England and Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.—[The Lord Advocate.]

7.44 p.m.

Mr. Head: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
This stage marks the end of a long period of work, research and consideration, the majority of which has been undertaken by the Committee which drafted this Bill. My position and that of my hon. Friends the Under-Secretary of State for War and the Under-Secretary of State for Air has been to commend to the House a child for which we cannot claim the parentage, although that is an undignified role in many walks of life. We should like, once again, to express our gratitude to those who did the work on the Bill.
As far as I can recollect, this has not been a highly contentious Measure. It has been welcomed by the Inter-Departmental Committee and by the Service Departments. Of course, nobody knows until the Bill becomes an Act and begins to operate how good it is going to be. It is rather like a racing motor-car or motor-cycle which has not yet been round the track.
I think that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington, South (Sir P. Spens) would agree with me that the true test of this Measure will be when it begins to work in the three Services. However, from my experience of it so far, I think I am justified in saying, and hoping, that it will work supremely well, and that the Services will find it a first-class Measure. One thing that I can say without any doubt at all is that it is an immense improvement on the existing Act put before the Select Committee.
On the occasion of the Third Reading, I also wish to thank hon. Members for the way in which they have treated the Bill in the House, and also to thank them for the singularly and almost phenomenally non-party manner in which the Bill has been discussed, with hon. Members on both sides jumping up to contravene hon. Members opposite quite across party and only on behalf of the Bill. I often felt that I should rise to explain some knotty point of law, but always before I could do so someone like the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) or some other hon. Member had done it for me.
This has been an important and a very major step for the Services, and it has

come out of a great storm which was, perhaps, not generated out of the most noble purposes, but one—[HON MEMBERS: "Oh."] Hon. Gentlemen must wait. I said "noble," not "ignoble." It was, perhaps, not generated out of the most noble purposes, but one hon. Member opposite, and I do not know who it was, found, over some political controversy, the biggest diamond mine for filibustering that anybody has ever found except, possibly—and I may be out of order in saying this—the Naval Discipline Act.
In conclusion, and on behalf, I am quite certain, of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Air, and, I know full well, of the Army Council, I wish to thank the Committee for the work it has done, and the House for the way in which it has received the Bill.

7.49 p.m.

Mr. Strachey: As someone who was not a member of the Committee which did the work on this Bill, I should like to say a word from this side of the House. Like my right hon. and hon. Friends who have taken so large a part in this debate, I was not a member of that Committee, but I think it right to express our great gratitude to the Committee for its work.
Though, like the Secretary of State for War, I and many of my hon. Friends were not members of the Committee, we took an active part in the deliberations which resulted in that Committee being set up. It was not at all an ignoble purpose. Indeed, I think I might say quite frankly that it was the time-honoured and indispensable purpose which is summed up in the phrase, "The business of an Opposition is to oppose." That was the purpose which gave rise to these deliberations in the Committee, and which proved so constructive. It shows that the spirit of opposition which may not be particularly constructive when first exhibited often gives good results. Hon. and right hon. Members who were members of that Committee have brought us something of great value. The House has accepted it almost in toto, and I have very little doubt that, as the Secretary of State has foreshadowed, it will be of very great advantage to the Services—and that is the thing which everyone has most at heart.

7.50 p.m.

Sir P. Spens: I must acknowledge with very great gratitude the generosity of the House for the way in which it has dealt with this and the Bills which accompany it. I do not suppose that any Members of the Select Committee imagined, when they were starting their work, that the day would come when they would ask the House to accept such a very substantial set of Bills as they eventually did. The whole way through the proceedings of the Committee, and all through the passage of the Bills through the House, there has been a degree of co-operation which I only wish were more often seen in the House.
It would not be right for me to allow this occasion to go by without once again recording our thanks to those who really did the hard work behind the scenes on our behalf, that is to say, our Departmental Committee, the Parliamentary draftsmen, and those who gave evidence before us. It is for their labours as much as for those of the members of the Committee that the House and, I hope, the country will record a debt of gratitude.
I should be out of order if I referred to anything that was not in the Bill which is now before the House, but I venture to say, very shortly, that at this moment I feel rather sorry that the Act under which I was brought up, under which I did my service, and under which other hon. Members did their service, is very shortly going into the limbo of history. It goes with my first spiked helmet, the scarlet tunic, white belt and red striped trousers of the first unit to which I ever had the honour to belong—the Royal Warwickshire Regiment—while I was still a schoolboy, and it goes with the drill of preparing to receive cavalry and all those other wonderful things of the past.
All I can say is that I hope that we have done something which will make life in the Army a better and a happier one, not only for the Regular soldiers, whom we must have—and whom I hope, by some of the provisions of the Bill and other actions outside it, will be encouraged to

remain in the Army—but also for the boys who are going in every year under the National Service Acts. If we have done that we have done something which we can remember with pleasure all the remaining days of our lives.

7.54 p.m.

Mr. A. Henderson: I should like to associate myself with what has just been said by the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington, South (Sir P. Spens). He and I, and some of my colleagues upon this side of the House, sat through many long weeks working out the provisions of the Bill and the two Bills which are to follow. I am quite sure that the average Service man does not expect that anything wonderful is coming out of this legislation. Broadly speaking, it is a modernisation of a law which has been in existence for 60 or 70 years. It brings the law up to the standards required in these days.
What Service men and women can understand is that 16 or 20 Members of Parliament, from both sides of the House, embarked upon this arduous task with the sole intention of seeking to bring into being a modern Act dealing both with the Army and the Air Force. These Bills express the desire of those Members of Parliament to do something to help those who are serving us in the Armed Forces of our country.
I associate not only myself but my colleagues upon the Committee first with what the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington, South said with regard to those who aided us in our labours, and also with what was said by the Secretary of State. We feel with him that this is a job which has been well done, and we hope that it will have a most helpful effect upon the future of the Service for which he is at present responsible and also for the Service for which his hon. Friend is one of those responsible, namely, the Royal Air Force.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

AIR FORCE BILL

As amended, considered.

Clause 53.—(IRREGULAR ARREST AND CONFINEMENT.)

7.57 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Air (Mr. George Ward): I beg to move, in page 26, line 12, to leave out "in writing."
This and the following Amendment, in line 14, are drafting Amendments. As the Clause stands at present, the commander of the guard is required, by subsection (3, b), to give in writing to his superior officer the written report which he has received about the offence. The expression "in writing" is therefore clearly inapt, and the Amendment meets that point.

Amendment agreed to.

Further Amendment made: In page 26, line 14, at beginning insert "a written statement containing."

Clause 151.—(DEDUCTIONS FROM PAY FOR MAINTENANCE OF WIFE OR CHILD.)

Mr. Ward: I beg to move, in page 84, line 1, to leave out from "power" to the end of the line and insert:
to make an order under this section.
The purpose of the Amendment is to cure a rather subtle flaw in the drafting of subsection (5), which deals with orders made by the Air Council for the maintenance of children after they reach the age of 16. Subsection (4) was intended to give power to vary an order made under the Clause, including power to vary an order under subsection (5). It was, therefore, unnecessary and confusing to open the subsection with the expression:
The power under this Section to make or vary …
Indeed, the expression lets in an argument that under subsection (5, c), for example, an order may be continued but not varied in amount.

As there was some doubt about this matter during the discussion of the Army Bill, perhaps I should make the position clear by saying that an hon. Member opposite who suggested that there was another way of dealing with the matter was right to the extent that if one wanted to be long-winded enough one could amend it, rather clumsily, by adding the words "vary or revoke," but those words would have to be added in paragraphs (a), (b) and (c) as well; or the phrase "to continue" would not make it clear that the amount could be varied as well as revoked or continued.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause 218.—(JURISDICTION OF COURTS.)

8.0 p.m.

The Lord Advocate (Mr. W. R. Milligan): I beg to move, in page 118, line 12, to leave out "under this Act" and insert:
to which this section applies.
We have given consideration to certain suggestions made in committee that Clause 218 might, in its terms, be restricted; in other words, that where an offence to which this Clause applies is committed in Scotland the offender should be tried in Scotland, and, similarly, that if it is committed in England, the offender should be tried in England.

Amendment agreed to.

Further Amendment made: In page 118, line 14, at end insert:
Provided that such an offence committed in any part of the United Kingdom shall not be triable outside that part of the United Kingdom.
(2) The offences to which this section applies are offences against any of the following sections of this Act, that is to say, section nineteen, section one hundred and sixty-one, section one hundred and seventy-one, and sections one hundred and ninety-one to one hundred and ninety-seven; and references in this section to a part of the United Kingdom are references to England and Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.—[Mr. Ward.]

8.2 p.m.

Mr. Ward: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
The new Air Force Bill has undergone very careful scrutiny in Committee. The fact that it has emerged comparatively unscathed is yet another strong tribute to the careful and highly-skilled labours of the members of the Select Committee, to whom I should like again to express my indebtedness, and to add my tribute to that already paid to the Committee by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for War.
I am quite sure that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington, South (Sir P. Spens) and the members of his Committee feel very justly proud at this moment of the result of their labours. I feel extremely glad and proud also to have been associated with this first revision of the Air Force Act. Some, like my right hon. and learned Friend, may regret the passing of some old-world expressions enshrined in the existing Act, but a fresh Act, brought up to date, logically arranged and as clear as a legal code can reasonably be made will, I know, be a boon to students of Air Force law, and particularly to those officers who, although not lawyers themselves, are charged with the administration of that law.
I should like once again to thank hon. Memers on both sides of the House for the careful examination which they have given to this Bill, and for the friendly and co-operative spirit in which they have tried to improve it.

8.4 p.m.

Mr. M. Stewart: My right hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Strachey) said a few words on the Third Reading of the Army Bill; it is perhaps appropriate that I should say a little on the Third Reading of the Air Force Bill.
There are, at the moment, few hon. Members present on this side of the House who were not members of the Select Committee. It is, therefore, a little difficult for us to pay a tribute to the work of the Committee, but we are greatly indebted to the Under-Secretary

for the tribute that he has paid. I am sure that I shall carry my hon. and right hon. Friends with me if I pay tribute to the work of the Chairman of the Committee, to the Departmental Committee, and to the very many people who did not appear before us but who must have helped in the preparation of memoranda.
I think that the completion of this piece of work will be not only a source of gratification to us here, but a considerable source of relief both to the War Office and to the Air Ministry. They have had many other anxieties while these Bills were under preparation, and many other calls on the time of their personnel, but the Committee never experienced the least sign of impatience with our rather persistent, meticulous, and detailed demands.
The Committee experienced nothing but the utmost willingness to provide the fullest possible information. Without that help this work could not have been brought to its successful conclusion. I am happy to join with the hon. Gentleman in recommending that the House should give the Bill a Third Reading.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

REVISION OF THE ARMY AND AIR FORCE ACTS (TRANSITIONAL PROVISIONS) BILL

As amended, considered.

8.6 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for War (Mr. Fitzroy Maclean): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
This Bill has so far received the same measure of approval from all sides of the House as has the main Bill. It is true that the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) helped us to speed things up a little, and I think that that was welcomed by the whole House.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

FATSTOCK (GUARANTEE PAYMENTS)

Motion made, and Question proposed,
That the Fatstock (Guarantee Payments) Order, 1955, dated 7th March, 1955, a copy of which was laid before this House on 8th March, be approved.—[Mr. R. Allan.]

Mr. Ede: Are we not to have any explanation of the Order from the Government Front Bench? Is not the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland competent to deal with it?

8.8 p.m.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Henderson Stewart): This Order was, of course, placed on the Table by the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of Food. The reason for that was that it is the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of Food who is now responsible for this matter. Under arrangements of which the House is aware, the Secretary of State for Scotland will, on, I think, 1st April next, take over from the Minister of Food some of his duties, including those referred to in this Order, in relation to Scotland.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland is, therefore, not directly concerned at this moment. On the other hand, because he will become responsible on 1st April, he feels himself at the present moment, as it were unofficially, jointly responsible for these matters. He will, in fact, become jointly responsible, so far as the Scottish side is concerned, on 1st April.
The purpose of the Order is merely, if one might use the word, to formalise—to give Parliamentary form to—the arrangements which were made last year for a change in the price procedure. It is thought that the guarantees which were announced some months ago should be incorporated in a Statutory Instrument of this kind. The scheme now in operation is not in any sense altered by this Order. Even if one takes Article 11, where there would appear to be some slight change, I would point out that it is a change in form rather than anything else.
What Article 11 does is to provide that in any future arrangements different guarantees may be applied in different parts of the country. There may be, for example, one set of arrangements for

England, another for Scotland, and another for Northern Ireland. At present there is only one United Kingdom arrangement, and there is no present intention of altering that. All this Order does is to make it possible, if in future it is thought wise to have different arrangements, to make those arrangements officially applicable. Therefore, that article is in a sense an enabling one.
In every other respect, I think I am right in saying that all we are considering here is the present system of fatstock guarantee payments, and we are merely giving it greater statutory form then it at present enjoys. For that reason, it was thought necessary to lay this Order, and I hope that the House will accept it

8.10 p.m.

Mr. Thomas Williams: After that very illuminating description of this Order, I am sure that its meaning will be transparently clear to every hon. Member. I am glad the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland did not quote from the Order. He might possibly have tended to confuse the House if he had done so. I am afraid, however, that something has gone wrong, and it is perhaps as well that the hon. Gentleman was in his place, otherwise the Government would not have got their Order.
This Order, as I understand it, simply transforms the fatstock guarantee payments system from what it was—merely a temporary scheme—into what it is now hoped will be a permanent scheme. I am not sure that it will become permanent, although perhaps it is more permanent than it was under the temporary arrangements made in 1945. It is as well the hon. Gentleman did not quote from the Order. If he had done so, I think he would certainly have confused many hon. Members, who would have blinked at the language used, although, as I understand it, no other language would have been suitable for the occasion.
For instance, Article 5 (2) says:
Where, in connection with any sale taken into account for the purpose of calculating any average price, any payment was made—

(a) under the 1954 scheme by way of individual guarantee payment, percentage addition, quality premium or deadweight guarantee payment within the meaning of that scheme; or
 (b) under article six, seven, eight or nine of this Order.


that payment shall be treated for the purposes of that calculation as having formed part of the price paid on that sale.
That is just about as clear as mud. I think I know what it really means, but I am afraid that many hon. Members would not understand it very quickly. In any case, there must be a basis for what we call the average market realisation price, but I suppose this system is as good as any other, and that set of words is as good as any other, too.
All this arises out of the change-over from guaranteed price to a deficiency payment—from the complex to the simple, so we are told. It is so simple that only one in 10,000 will understand it. However, I do not propose to argue the principle of this fatstock payments scheme tonight. I do not think this is quite the occasion. This Order is purely a machinery Order, and whether the machinery is good, bad, or indifferent, experience alone will tell.
I should like to ask the hon. Gentleman one or two questions, of which I am sorry I could not have given him notice because I did not expect that he would be the responsible Minister for this purpose tonight. I should like to know what is meant in Articles 6 and 7, in which the words
The … Minister may, if he thinks fit …" 
are repeated three times. What is going to help him to think fit? What will prevent him from thinking fit? Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will be good enough to tell us exactly what those words mean.
Then I would draw the hon. Gentleman's attention to Article 10 (4), which deals with a carcase being certified as unfit for human consumption. I am sure that some suitable arrangement has been made, but I should like to know what will happen if an animal is sold at a live auction mart. It may or may not be slaughtered that day or the next day or the day after. Will the seller receive his cash before slaughter, even though after slaughter it is found that the animal or the carcase is unfit for human consumption?
Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will tell us, because I had an experience at Leyton-stone before the war when we saw within the confines of the abattoir two local authority meat inspectors who inspected every carcase. There, for our special edification that morning, at least one pig,

apparently well and hearty and free from any form of disease, was opened up and was found to be totally unfit for human consumption.
I should like to know what the procedure is. When does the seller in the live auction mart get paid, and who is punished for the unfit condition of the carcase? The example which I have quoted can be paralleled all over the country; and with this mixed system of live auction marts and sales on deadweight basis we ought to know exactly what the machinery really is.
Turning to Article 10 (3, b), I should like to know how a certifying officer is satisfied that a carcase is not intended for consumption in the producer's household. The words state clearly enough that no payment will be made if the carcase is destined for the producer's home. I should like to know how the certifying officer satisfies himself that the carcase is to be sold in the butcher's shop and is not to be consumed in his home.
Finally, I should like to know how prices are moving in the livestock auction mart compared with prices paid on a deadweight basis when animals are slaughtered by the Farmers' Marketing Corporation. I hope that there is some similarity between them, but perhaps the hon. Gentleman will tell us what the relationship between the prices really is.
We are not going to oppose this Order because, I repeat, it is merely a piece of machinery. The principle can, perhaps, be debated on a more appropriate occasion, but we are entitled to receive answers to the questions which have been put. Then we shall watch the progress of this highly complex system that is now in operation—the Order suggests for all time, but which we doubt very much will be the case. Indeed, if I were to make one last observation about the Order, it would be that it is not likely to become permanent because it is too complex for the Departmental officers, the producers and the consumers to understand.
I know that the Treasury has a vested interest in the efficiency and effectiveness of the system, but whether it is going to work out as a better, more efficient and more effective system than guaranteed prices, which are known before the animal is taken to market, remains to be seen. I hope, therefore, that we shall receive answers to these questions.

8.20 p.m.

Major H. Legge-Bourke: I am glad that the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Mr. T. Williams) does not intend to oppose the Order. I wish to support it, and, although the right hon. Gentleman does not think so, I believe that the Order will help a great many people to understand more clearly than they have understood up to now exactly what is involved in implementing the guarantees under the Act.
But I want to draw the attention of the House to the fact that there is some cause for concern—I put it no higher than that—at the great number of not-very-forward store cattle which are being slaughtered for immediate consumption. If we are to operate Article 10 of the Order, it is important that this matter should be borne in mind by the Minister, because Article 10 lays down the various stipulations applying to the certification of these animals, whether live or in carcase form. There is no question that, both in this country and in Ireland, there has, owing to public taste, been slaughtering of not-very-forward store cattle on an unprecedented scale over the last few months.
The serious aspect is that if the process continues we shall gradually see the operation of the law of diminishing returns, because the young stock coming on will not mature, and we shall gradually produce less and less meat although we shall have a bigger and bigger head of stock at any one time. It is important that this matter should be investigated most seriously. Although I do not think a danger point has yet been reached, if the present trend continues we shall be short of bulk, although a very high quality of meat may be consumed, from the United Kingdom and Southern Ireland production.
I am producing beef in Southern Ireland, and the same thing is happening there as is happening in this country. This morning I was in Cambridge market, and I was talking to several people whom I know quite well. They told me about the same thing—the enormous number of animals coming forward for slaughter which ought not to be slaughtered for another six or eight months or even a year.
This shows that public taste has changed since before the war. No one

wishes to criticise the public for having changed its taste; it is right that we should allow public taste to change. But it is important to take notice of the change and to look ahead, because we must ensure that the plans which have been made for an increase in agricultural production work out successfully. I am quite certain that if this taste for lean beef continues to be met substantially by the home production, something will have to be done to ensure that we do not go on slaughtering animals which are not fit for slaughter, and which ought to be kept for another six months or even a year. I hope the Minister will bear that matter in mind, because it is important.
The only other point I wish to make is one which was raised by the right hon. Member for Don Valley—what is meant by the words, "the Minister may" in Articles 6 and 7? One point which interested me a great deal, even when the right hon. Member for Don Valley was Minister for Agriculture, was the possibility of using differential subsidies to meet varying needs. It seems to me that the words "the Minister may" would allow the Minister power to adopt differential subsidies as between the small man and the large man or between a man living in a marginal area and a man living in a good farming area. If the Minister could find a way of operating that system, I believe that he would have power to do so.
So far, no one has found a way of operating differential subsidies, but I am sure that we must go on with the search because I am certain that the country is now awakening to the fact that we cannot afford to give blanket guarantees whether they are needed or not.
I believe that the latest Price Review has been very well received by the farming industry and I congratulate the Minister upon it, but I am sure that if we want to reduce the Treasury contribution and to ease the burden on the taxpayer we must continue our search to ensure that whatever is paid from the taxpayer in subsidy is directed to where it is needed most, and diverted from where it is needed least.
That is an extremely difficult problem, but I think that Article 6 of the Order provides the opportunity if the way should ever be found. I would prefer the example of the smallholder who is producing pigs and who needs a steady


price more than does the big man who can perhaps grow feedingstuffs for his own pigs. At the moment I do not see, and I do not think anyone in the N.F.U. or elsewhere has found, a way of doing this, but we must go on looking for it, and I hope the Order will encourage every one concerned to do so.

8.26 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food (Dr. Charles Hill): Perhaps I may seek to reply to the questions put by the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Mr. T. Williams). The first point which he made concerned payments and the governing of payments, both under collective guarantees and under individual guarantees, by the words "if the Minister thinks fit."
We are advised that it is necessary to have that reservation, for there are certain rare circumstances in which it is proper for the Minister not to make payment. There have been one or two such instances, one which culminated in a prosecution for fraudulent offences, including putting animals through more than once, when it was necessary to retain outstanding moneys until the matter had been settled. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman and my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Major Legge-Bourke) that for such exceptional circumstances it is thought necessary for the Minister to have that reserve power.
The right hon. Gentleman's second point related to the position under Article 10 (2, c) where the animal is slaughtered for the producer's own butchery business and
is not intended for consumption in the producer's household.
The butcher is required to make a declaration to that effect. It is useless to pretend that it is possible, by enforcement or any other method, to ensure with certainty that that declaration is observed, but the point is recognised, and the producer is required to sign a declaration to the effect that the meat is not intended for consumption in his household, as part of the requirements of the scheme.
The right hon. Member asked what happened under Article 10 (4) when there is condemnation on the ground of disease. As he implied, the article relates to where the carcase has been certified,

but he put his question in relation to the auction sale of a live animal. The animal, in part or in whole, having subsequently been condemned, it is not possible—as I think the right hon. Member will agree—to track matters back so as to influence the payment which is made in respect of the sale. To put the answer bluntly, there is no recapture of deficiency payment; there is no recapture where such circumstances obtain.
The right hon. Member will appreciate that an animal which is obviously emaciated or diseased from the beginning will be excluded from the deficiency payment arrangements as not falling within the categories in respect of which those payments are made. But, should such an animal pass the scrutiny of the certifying officer and achieve a price at the auction sales, the position is that if condemnation subsequently takes place, no steps would be taken, indeed, no steps could be taken, to recover money which has been paid in respect of the auction transaction.

Mr. T. Williams: That is quite clear to me. I saw the difficulty when I saw the provision, but, to make it clearer still, perhaps the hon. Gentleman could tell us this. The producer takes to the livestock market one or more animals which are put up for auction and sold at "X" price. He is only assured of the price he receives, he is assured of the price at which the animal is knocked down at the auction mart. The only loser, therefore, can be the buyer. He loses to the extent of the loss of the deficiency payment, the individual guarantee and the standard price. Does the buyer have any redress, having purchased the animal on the hoof and not knowing what its internals look like until they are opened up? He is the only person likely to lose, if the animal is unfit for human consumption?

Dr. Hill: The right hon. Gentleman is correct. The man has made his bid for the animal of his choice. If subsequently it emerges that the animal is diseased and wholly unfit for human consumption, his is the loss.
The right hon. Member asked for a comparison between live weight and dead weight prices. He will appreciate that we cannot readily compare F.M.C. and auction prices because F.M.C. prices include the guarantees and auction prices


do not. That makes the comparison more difficult. Obviously the F.M.C. quotes the price based on knowledge and assessment of market prices, as does the butcher in the auction market. I cannot give a precise answer to the question except to say that, in general, the relationship is satisfactory but it is based on an assessment of a future market position and is bound from time to time to reveal disparities. We are watching the position, and in general we are satisfied that it is satisfactory.
My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely raised the question of the slaughter of immature stock. He will realise that we reject store stock in the live markets for subsidy, but it is true that some immature stock has been slaughtered, such has been the demand for home-killed meat. Sometimes that slaughtering has come about because of a shortage of winter feed. We do not think it has happened to an extent nor on a scale which will affect future supplies. One must be cautious in assessing what is happening without full statistical data, but, generally, our present opinion is that it will not affect future supplies. Those are the main considerations.
I did not follow the right hon. Gentleman's reference to the complexity of the scheme. A scheme that involves both a collective and an individual guarantee is complex, but the Order sets down for the scrutiny of the House the arrangements that have been made. I say to the right hon. Gentleman, in conclusion, that in respect of comparable schemes for other commodities from time to time, it is proposed to make Orders under Section 4 of the Act and to bring them to the House for its scrutiny and approval.

8.35 p.m.

Mr. Ede: There was one omission in the hon. Gentleman's speech. He forgot to thank the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland for explaining an Order which, I understand, is not his concern but is the concern of the hon. Gentleman. The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland did it with a suavity that indicated that he realised for whom he was speaking.
I should like to express my thanks, and the thanks of those of us on this side of the House, for the courtesy of the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland in

stepping into the breach in the way that he did. It might also have been more fitting had the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food expressed some regret to the House that he was not here until nine minutes after the discussion of an Order for which he was responsible had started.

Dr. Hill: I do express such regret and join in the thanks to my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary. The only point I would make is that the Order is signed by one of the appropriate Ministers and my hon. Friend does represent another of the appropriate Ministers.

Mr. Ede: But he explained that that Minister had no responsibility.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That the Fatstock (Guarantee Payments) Order, 1955, dated 7th March, 1955, a copy of which was laid before this House on 8th March, be approved.

PUBLIC ACCOUNTS

Mr. Speir discharged from the Committee of Public Accounts, Mr. Arbuthnot added.—[Mr. E. Wakefield.]

TRANSPORT FACILITIES, CHINGFORD

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. E. Wakefield.]

8.36 p.m.

Mr. Græme Finlay: I am grateful for this opportunity of raising a local problem which is of exceptional interest to those of my constituents who live in the borough of Chingford. The borough is, of course, situated within the fringes of Metropolitan London and upon the edge of Epping Forest. Its present size is the result of very rapid growth in the inter-war years when North-East London was spreading. The borough has very largely a dormitory population, who find their daily work within the Metropolis, and so the question of good rail and road communications to the City is of the utmost importance to them.
Unhappily, the existing services leave a very great deal to be desired, as my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary will be aware from the terms of a letter which was addressed to him on


16th March by the Mayor of Chingford. That letter came directly as the result of a town meeting which was held on 3rd March to discuss transport services in the borough. It was a very well-attended meeting and provided undoubted evidence, genuine and substantial, of public concern at the unsatisfactory nature of the transport services, both rail and road, provided to the borough.
The two matters to which I desire to direct myself principally are these: first, the Chingford to Liverpool Street railway service, and secondly, the No. 38 London Transport omnibus service, which runs from the edge of Epping Forest to Victoria. To deal with the railway first, it would, I think, generally be conceded that the Eastern Region of British Railways is not the best favoured of the British Railways system. That might be deemed to be an understatement, but I prefer to put the matter in a thoroughly moderate way.
The Eastern Region inherited a very unhappy history from its predecessors, and the results of that history are with us today. My constituents have, not unnaturally, made me aware of these deficiences from time to time, and I therefore cite a fairly typical letter, which I received on 21st January this year, complaining, amongst other things, of defective heating apparatus, poor lighting and dirty coaches. I cite the letter: 
Last night's trains arrived at Chingford from one and a half to two hours late. I understand a carriage door fell off a train at Clapton. If this is so (and this is not the first time I have heard that such an incident has occurred) it further confirms my contention above.
The writer goes on:
Last night, the trains left Liverpool Street in such a congested condition that people could not close the doors and the men were holding the doors when it was found the compartments were too full for the doors to be closed. The train I was on last night stopped under Bishopsgate Tunnel for half an hour whilst we were choked with sulphur fumes. … It made many efforts to restart, and I am told it could not move but had to wait for the next train to come along to give it a bump so that it could restart. We certainly felt the bump, and as one passenger who boarded the train at Wood Street remarked that the engine was almost falling to pieces, this statement seems to be quite feasible. No attempt was made to notify the stations up the line regarding the failure, the lateness of the trains, etc., and as some of the staff complained, quite rightly, We are told nothing. We are quite ignorant

of what has happened, and then the public don't like it because we can tell them nothing.' Surely, it should be the first duty of someone to make every station master au fait with the position.
That is the letter. There we have it.
In addition to the complaints which I cited before reading the letter, we have complaints of late time-keeping, congestion, discomfort from sulphur, and bad public relations. These antiquated locomotives and their ramshackle coaches which ply between Chingford and Liverpool Street, which is probably the most depressing station in the country, are pure Emmet, except that they are void of the humour and charm the artist gives to his pictures—and they are certainly devoid of that from the point of view of the unfortunate traveller who has to make use of those railway services to and from the City, particularly after a hard day's work.
I know of the recent proposals of British Railways about modernisation and re-equipment include the electrification of this line, and with my Chingford constituents I rejoice at that decision, but, unhappily, it does not appear that that can be implemented until at least two or three years have gone by. If that is so the question then arises, what can be done in the meantime to mitigate and alleviate this situation? Surely matters like late timekeeping, heating apparatus, dirt, and better public information can and should be attended to at once? That would not prejudice the implementation of this scheme or delay its starting date in any way.
The conditions are quite intolerable for the passengers, and I hope that my hon. Friend will be in a position to tell me of some proposed improvements. As regards dirt, he will no doubt be greatly helped by the promise of the Government about the way in which they are going to deal with smog. That, of course, is a very considerable factor in making the rolling stock and locomotives and the railway lines dirty, and it is very disheartening for the train crews who have to clean them.
I know that the British Transport Commission has made a number of investigations into these complaints, and I should like to deal with a few points that arise out of those investigations. First of all, there is the reduction of services as contrasted with those of pre-war years, notwithstanding what the borough council


says as to the increase in the population. British Railways apparently take the view that the population figures for the area do not support the council's contention that an increase of the population has taken place. So far as Chingford is concerned, at any rate, there is a sharp conflict of evidence.
Although it is said that the borough has now about 4,500 inhabitants more than it had before the war the numbers of trains have been substantially reduced. I cite the figures. In 1939 on weekdays there were 125 trains a day; in 1955 there are 84 only. On Saturdays in 1939 there were 126 trains a day; in 1955 only 75. On Sundays in 1939 there were 68 trains a day. On Sundays in 1955 there were 35 only.
The shrinkage of these passenger figures, which are today relied upon by British Transport Commission is, of course, strictly related to this reduction in the number of trains, which I think is conceded, as well as to the deterrent effect of the bad travelling conditions and the provision of increased bus and trolleybus services to the borough. The sooner the facilities of this line can be improved and the other road services relieved of the strain and congestion to which they are subject at present, the better.
There is also a sharp conflict of evidence between my constituents and the Commission officials about overcrowding and time-keeping. As to the former, the Commission says that there is normally no overcrowding on the Walthamstow-Chingford line in the accepted sense of the term. The Commission praysin aid certain train loadings taken by it in the course of a full census on 2nd November, 1954. The Commission says that only one train, the 5.40 p.m. out of Liverpool Street, was overcrowded. But how can the Commission possibly reach the norm upon the basis of one day's sample only?
That sort of survey is just not adequate in the face of the testimony of my constituents who make constant use of the line and suffer on it every day. It is not good enough to take one day and rely upon that in the face of such testimony. It also would be a mercy if some due notice could be given to passengers about cancellations of trains, otherwise they are liable to be very seriously inconvenienced. A series of suggestions for bettering these conditions have been placed before the

authorities. I hope that not only will they receive the most careful consideration, as I am sure they will, but they will produce really concrete improvement and that it will become a more comfortable and more convenient business than it is at present to travel between Chingford and Liverpool Street station.
I turn now to the No. 38 London Transport Executive omnibus service between Victoria and the Royal Forest Hotel on the outskirts of Epping Forest. I know that on this route, travelling straight through the heart of London, the largest city in the world, there are difficult problems. The streets of London are heavily over-encumbered with motor cars and other road traffic. That is a fact which I am certain has engaged and will engage the most assiduous attentions of my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation. I know also that the exceptional difficulties are due to shortage of staff and other factors like road improvements which the Executive has had to experience in connection with this service in recent months.
Unhappily, Chingford suffers particularly in this way because it is, as it were, at the end of the road. Here again I have a catalogue of complaints. The principal ones are irregular running—sometimes it has been recorded that as long as half an hour to three-quarters of an hour delays are not uncommon—one bus coming directly at the back of another, that is bunching, and short running. There is also the turning of northbound buses at Chingford Mount regardless of the number of passengers waiting there, thereby depriving citizens of that area of a service between the Mount and the Bull and Crown. They are deprived in order to help other citizens who live further on in the London area. In other words, it is indeed a disadvantage to live at the end of the road.
I do not intend to go into the details of these proposals, because that would take a very great time. I want however, to say this, that I would much welcome my hon. Friend's assurance that these complaints and the constructive proposals which have been put forward by the council to ameliorate the position will be very searchingly looked into with other constructive suggestions that may come from a fuller examination, because I know


there is real substance behind these complaints, and they are founded upon a genuine sense of public grievance.

8.51 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation (Mr. Hugh Molson): My hon. Friend the Member for Epping (Mr. Finlay) has availed himself of the privilege of a Member of the House in order to bring to our attention the grievances that are felt by his constituents and the difficulties under which they labour. It is not primarily the duty of the Ministry of Transport to deal with particular services, whether in London or elsewhere. Machinery has been set up by which they are able to make their representations to those who are responsible. It has, however, been the practice of successive Ministers of Transport of both political parties that they should be represented when matters of this kind are raised by hon. Members on behalf of their constituents.
I have listened with close attention to what my hon. Friend has to say. I will certainly make sure that those who are primarily responsible for the provision of transport services in Chingford and along the routes to which he has referred pay attention to what he has said this evening.
When the late Government introduced the Transport Act, 1947, they were at pains to provide that the general responsibility for the day-to-day running of the British Transport Commission and the London Transport Executive should lie with those bodies themselves and should be subject to criticism by the bodies also setup by Statute. The party opposite, when they were nationalising the transport system of the country, felt that it would be undesirable for the Government of the day to be responsible for every detail of the transport system. The Conservative Party, which was in opposition at the time, although opposed to nationalisation, entirely agreed with the line taken.
I must therefore make it perfectly plain to my hon. Friend that we cannot be responsible for the detailed running of particular services by the British Transport Commission or the London Transport Executive. Having said that, however, I should like to draw my hon. Friend's attention to the system set up for trans-

port in London. It is one of the general duties of the British Transport Commission
to provide, or secure the provision of, an adequate and properly co-ordinated system of passenger transport for the London Passenger Transport Area, due regard being had to efficiency, economy and safety of operation and to the needs of the public, agriculture, commerce and industry.
This means that different, and in some cases conflicting, considerations have to be taken into account, since the Commission must have regard to economy of operation as well as to the needs of the public.
The fact that at present the London Transport Executive is not paying its costs and meeting its charges to the British Transport Commission, obliges that body to be as economical as it can in the administration of its services. Those who use the transport have recourse to an independent body which can take into account their needs and their requirements. There is the Transport Users' Consultative Committee for London to which any one who is dissatisfied with the transport provided, may have recourse—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Rhys Hopkin Morris): I am not sure that I follow this discussion accurately. If I understand the Joint Parliamentary Secretary correctly, the matters that were raised by the hon. Member were not matters for which the Minister was responsible, and the matter with which he is now dealing merely shows what the hon. Member may do as an alternative.

Mr. Molson: I was coming on to say that if the constituents of my hon. Friend made representations to the Consultative Committee, and if that Committee took the view which he has been putting to the House, in that case, and only in that case, would my right hon. Friend have power to issue a directive to the British Transport Commission to require it to provide additional transport services. With due respect, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, I think that my hon. Friend is entitled to raise this matter upon the Adjournment. There are a number of matters—such as, for example, the closing of branch line railways—which have frequently been raised and where it would only be possible for the Minister to issue a directive if the Consultative Committee were of the


opinion that the facilities were being unreasonably withdrawn. It is, I think, also proper for me to say that my right hon. Friend has no direct responsibility in this matter but that, if the grievances put forward this evening were, in the opinion of the Consultative Committee, substantial, my right hon. Friend would have the power to issue a directive under the 1947 Act.
A recently published annual report of the Central Transport Consultative Committee stated that:
Although many communications are received from individuals, it is probable that the public at large are not yet fully aware of the opportunity which the Committee afford. We feel, therefore, that any steps your Ministry can take to increase this awareness would be of service to the travelling public.
I welcome this opportunity to draw the attention of my hon. Friend and his constituents to the way in which it would be possible for them to argue the difficulties from which they are suffering at present with a body appointed to represent the travelling public.

Mr. Finlay: I am already aware of the procedure about the London Transport Users' Consultative Committee. In fact, on 10th March of this year the borough council made use of that procedure.

Mr. Molson: If the procedure were adopted only on 10th March; does my hon. Friend know whether the Consultative Committee has found that the complaints were well founded?

Mr. Finlay: As I understand it, the position is that they have been asked to look further into the representations on these matters which have been made and to report to the next meeting of the Consultative Committee which will probably be held in about three months' time.

Mr. Molson: In that case, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, you will understand why it is that I have adopted a certain attitude of detachment.
It appears to me that my hon. Friend has shown a certain impatience, which is highly creditable to him, because of his zealous concern for the welfare of his constituents. But a certain procedure has been set in motion, and since the matter is still being considered by the Consultative Committee, I can only say that I hope my hon. Friend will be prepared to await the conclusion of its deliberations. As I have made quite plain, it would only be possible for my right hon. Friend to intervene if my hon. Friend and his constituents were able to satisfy the Consultative Committee that they had a substantial grievance. The attitude of the British Transport Commission has always been to pay the greatest respect to the views expressed by the Consultative Committee. If the matter is still under consideration by that Committee, it would be most undesirable for me to go any further in expressing a view about the representations made by my hon. Friend.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at three minutes past Nine o'clock.